The Way Out

The snare has been broken,

  and we have escaped. 

-Psalm 124:7

Faith is reaching out

             to the hand

             that breaks the snare

             and sets us free

             to become

             who and what

             we were meant to be

             as individuals

             and as a people.

It begins with a trusted word

               of a distant place of hope

               and a means

               to travel there.

It is a quality more than a decision,

       a discovery more than a doctrine,

       a yearning with its careful calculation,

       and a road with its shining destination.

In the end, our faith is

          what we believe

          is the only way

          out

          of this mess.

What fault did your fathers find in me,

  that they strayed so far from me?

They followed worthless idols

  and became worthless themselves.

-Jeremiah 2:5

 

Life According to Jesus

Faith is not " believing in spite of evidence," nor "believing what you know isn't true," as some have cynically suggested.  Rather it is an open-eyed adventurous affirmation that in and through things is a Good Will, and that Good Will is God.  Therefore faith relates itself to that Good Will by betting its life on it.  (E. Stanley Jones, Is the Kingdom of God Realism?)

WORRISOME STORIES ABOUT LIFE

Two false stories about life cause a great deal of worry.  The first is that life is about sowing and reaping.  Planning and results.  Doing and getting.  Although we do know that life has definite cause/effect chains, this is not what life is about; it is not the whole story.  "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy."  (Ps. 126)  There is an incongruency about life.  We do not always get what we deserve.  We thank God for it.

Another false story is that life can be "stored away in barns."  Somehow we can save up for later.  We work so we can retire.  We save so we can spend.  We do good so that good will be done to us.  Although we are encouraged to "store up our treasures in heaven," the reason is not so we can get to them later, but because where our treasures are, that's where our heart is.  "I said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."  (Ps. 16:2)  Life must be lived and cannot be kept for later.  Many things are best left behind anyway.

THE BIRDS' STORY

The birds live the true story of life by instinct.  "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them."  (Mt. 6:26)  Life is about being fed.  The birds are not fed if they remain still, but they do not worry.  They do not live the "sowing/reaping" story nor the "storing away in barns" story.  They live the story of being fed.  What the birds do naturally, we must do by faith and choice.

Life is more important than eating and drinking.  It is more important than sowing and reaping and storing away in barns.  Life is about hungering, but not for food.  Life is about thirsting, but not for drink.  "I am the bread of life." (Jn, 6:35)  "The water I give to him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  (Jn. 4:14)  Life is about hungering and thirsting for Christ and being satisfied by him.  Not just by what he said or what he did, but by him.  It is about our daily bread.  It is about the heavenly manna that spoils if it is not eaten that day.  (Ex. 6:13-23; Jn. 6:32-33)

The systems of human life set up against Christ promote sowing and storing up.  Both stories are about a world of scarcity.  In such a world the first thing we think in the morning is how we didn't get enough sleep and the last thing is how we didn't get enough done.  Shame is the whip that keeps us going.  (Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability)  Conversely, life according to Jesus is set up on trust (faith).  We trust that there is enough time to finish what God has given us.  We trust that he will give us the resources to do so as we ask him.  Massive systems of propaganda speak against such trust.  Part of us rebels at the thought of such trust.  But it is before us, as plain at the birds in the air.

The One Who Could

The one who could gather large crowds
  with his teaching and healing
  also leaves them behind.
The one who could explain everything to his disciples
  when they were alone
  also lets them alone as he slept in the middle of their storm.
The one who could speak only in parables to the crowds
  so they might not hear, but only understand,
  also quiets howling winds with his words.
The one who could speak only in parables to the crowds
  so they might not see, but only perceive,
  also stills the furious waves with his words.
The one who could say "He who has ears, let him hear!"
  also makes the winds and waves obey him.
The one who could command our trust and love
  also allows us to ask, "Who is this?"
The one who could hear us say, "Don't you care if we drown?"
  also says, "Do you still lack my faith?"

(Meditation on Mark 4:35-41, Jesus Calms the Storm)

(M

The Gift Is Not Like the Trespass

Romans 5: How Faith, Hope, and Love Relate to Being Good


In answer to the question "Who is well-off?," Paul answers in chapter 3, "The one who is justified freely by God's grace." (v.24)  This is in direct contrast to the one who seeks to justify himself and seeks to obtain goodness on his own.  Such a blessedness from God frees me from boasting and worrying about how I am doing compared with others before God.  Instead I am free to be good because it is a gift that God gives by the blood of Jesus, which reconciles me to God.  That is, it places me before him in the relationship as son; it brings me into the home of the Trinity as family.  I am justified and made right by the work and invitation of Jesus.

In chapter 4, Paul explains that any boasting based on being a Jew is excluded because Abraham is the father of all who trust is God, whether Jew or Gentile.  Everyone is blessed through Abraham's trust in God.  His faith does not belong to the covenant of circumcision, but precedes and transcends it.  Circumcision comes from faith; faith does not come from circumcision.  Who is well-off?  Who is good?  Anyone who will trust in God and embrace the door he has opened into his home through Jesus.

Now Paul explains how I am justified or made good.  He moves into the question "Who is good?"  Paul describes goodness with three words: faith, hope, and love.  Faith gives me access to God's grace.  By trusting him, I obtain his favor and his ability to do what I cannot do on my own.  Such trusting brings hope.  I find that I am confident about my present and future life because I trust in God and his grants his grace.  Even suffering brings hope because through trusting God in suffering, I find perseverance and then a real change in my character.

I have experienced this change in an experiment in which I explored the power of the gospel.  Is it really enough?  Can it really satisfy my deepest longings and set me free from my most addicting habits and sins?  To this I found it to be remarkably able.  I let go of the remedies in which I had been seeking and trying to fix myself and manage my own goodness.  I surrendered to God and did what he asked and found that even though it seemed at first "the long way around," he addressed the root of my problem - my trust and love of him - and changed my character - the center of my own personal "kingdom" - into something else.  Such inward and outward change has brought me hope, so that I seek to grow daily into the likeness of Christ.

Such hope can only disappoint me if I am not continually bathed in love.  Faith (trust) is fleeting if I do not know who I trust in and what he is like.  Hope disappoints me if I the reason for my confidence is not based in the trust of a loving God.  Without love, changes in character quickly become a source of empty self-righteousness and boasting, which lead to bitterness, envy, and death.  Only love keeps hope from becoming senseless positivism.

Paul explains the great love of God: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (v.8)  God does all the work before there is any promise of our accepting and enjoying it.  The feast is laid out before he knows if we will come at all.  Actually, it is laid out as we actively rebel and attack him.  He plans for our arrival home even as we are abandoning him for our own desires and interests.  This is the love that God has.  When we were his enemies, he already had the treaty written out and waiting for our commitment.

To understand God's love, I must also understand myself.  To minimize or excuse my own rebellion against God, my own lack of concern, my own desire to have my own way, my own rejection of his love is to misunderstand how much God loves me and empty the cross of all its power.  Without sin, the cross is superfluous, even foolishness.  If I am "not that bad," then God is not that smart, or even enjoys cruelty for the sake of cruelty.  I must embrace my origin as sinner and never let that go in order to see God's love for what it is.

So Paul explains simply that from the time of Adam, "sin was in the world."  His evidence for this is that even though people "did not sin by breaking a command" before Moses, "death reigned."  The outcome of sin is death, so even without a command to break, the outcome of sin was still obvious among all people - death.

God's remedy is not a simple reversal of the problem.  "The gift is not like the trespass." (v.15)  I do not have to "make up" for each and every sin that I have made in the pattern of my predecessor Adam.  His one sin is the father of all sin - a lack of faith.  All sin is not trusting or loving God.  I do not have to climb back up out of the pit I have dug through my lack of trust and separation from God one step at a time.  Instead, "the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification."  (v.16)  I am made into a son by Christ's one act of grace rather than having to "make up" for all my acts of disobedience and mistrust.

In this way, the gift is like the trespass.  Adam's sin is the model and picture and precursor to all sin.  It is faithlessness, no more and no less.  Christ's work is the work of ultimate faith.  It is the complete opposite to Adam's betrayal.  "Just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous."  (v.19)

What a picture of God's grace!  Who is good?  The one who trusts in God's love, receives God's love in his own heart, and finds hope in the changes that love brings to his life.  Such goodness is not earned by a simple reversal of doing good for all the bad I have done.  Instead, it is embraced by trusting that Jesus' work on the cross has indeed made me good enough to bring home to God and live in his presence and be changed completely from the inside out.

Lord, I am so grateful that your gift is not like the road I have taken away from you.  You have brought me back to you with one sweep of your mighty, loving arms through Jesus obedience to the cross.  The way is before me and there is much work to do, but none of it will bring me home to you.  I am already there, already in your presence daily because of Jesus.  My work will only make me more at home with you, more like Jesus.  That is what it is all for.  My praise to you!  You have made an everlasting way to you that I can walk for all eternity even though I started out as your enemy.  Amen.

The Goodness that Makes Life Worth Living Is Obtained by Trusting God and His Ways

Romans 1:  The Problem Is Shame in What God Has Supplied as the Way to Life

When we ask again: ‘How is it that when he enjoined us in this book of yours not to do anything or receive anything without witnesses, you did not ask him: “First do you show us by witnesses that you are a prophet and that you have come from God, and show us just what Scriptures there are that testify about you”’—they are ashamed and remain silent. [Then we continue:] ‘Although you may not marry a wife without witnesses, or buy, or acquire property; although you neither receive an ass nor possess a beast of burden unwitnessed; and although you do possess both wives and property and asses and so on through witnesses, yet it is only your faith and your scriptures that you hold unsubstantiated by witnesses. For he who handed this down to you has no warranty from any source, nor is there anyone known who testified about him before he came. On the contrary, he received it while he was asleep.’ (John of Damascus, Fount of Knowledge, Heresies, concerning Islam)  

Take note of verse 2.   The prophets testify about Jesus and lead up to him.  This is important to Paul in his writing about the gospel.  It is new.  It is unique.  It is also foretold and anticipated.

Paul received grace and his calling to apostleship for this gospel which in verse 5 he explains as "obedience that comes through faith."  We do not believe the gospel so that obedience is optional or unnecessary.  We believe the gospel so that we might complete our obedience to God.  The law and the gospel go to the same place and describe the destination the same, but only the gospel can get me there.  The law taken rightly is more descriptive than prescriptive.

His visit is for mutual encouragement, the heart of spiritual gifts (v.11).  Spiritual gifts, then, are about a connection between believers and not merely possessed in one's own life.  Without mutual edification, spiritual gifts are not really spiritual gifts.

The point of Paul's letter to the Roman church is addressing the shame that some people place on the gospel.  People prefer other "ways" to God and tend to leave the gospel because of its apparent weakness and unpopularity.  In contrast, Paul says that the gospel is God's power revealed as a righteousness by faith from "first to last."  (vv.16-17)

Shame in the gospel is nothing new.  It's unapologetic dependence on God as well as its unmitigated promise for real goodness in the lives of those who embrace and exercise it make it unpopular at all times.  People prefer to rely on their own resources.  They also prefer to have a goodness that appeals to people around them rather than a goodness that really changes them.  We all wish the world could be a better place, but we are largely unwilling to cling to the goodness that God gives because it requires real change to our lives.

Of course, righteousness by faith will be fleshed out in this letter, but at the outset, I find it helpful to understand this righteousness that Paul preaches answers the important life questions "What is real?" The power and ability of God.  "Who is well-off?"  Those who are being delivered from this evil age.  "What is good?"  What God has revealed in the gospel.  "How does one become a good person?"  By trusting in God's work through the gospel.  Faith is trust and always implied is trust in God and his ways.

Lord, may I shed my shame and embrace this faith that places your good news at the center of my life as the one thing I can count on and the one thing that will bring goodness and well-being to myself and others.  Amen.

Hearing Before Seeing

The eye is the lamp of the body. (Matthew 6:22)

As I thought about the scripture immediately preceding this one - "Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth. . . , but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven" - I realized that just as lust and greed stare at objects and "store them up" for continued reflection and enjoyment, devotion and virtue can also use the eyes to store up things for reflection and enjoyment. Staring and focusing one's eyes is a method for storing things up in ones heart. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

I do not think it is accidental that Jesus teaching about the lamp of the body follows this treasure passage in the Sermon on the Mount. My eyes can store things in my heart and illuminate my body. The body can be a very dark place, full of unpredictable actions and confusing feelings, when the eye is turned away from the light of God and is focused on the desires of the body. I find myself quickly conflicted and frustrated.

When the eye is turned to the things that feed the soul with peace and order, such peace is stored in the heart, and then the body becomes a fully lit room. Instead of tripping over the body and its desires as in a dark room, the light gives such desires their place in my life.

What is this light for the eyes? Eyes are hungry. They long to see. They can be filled with words and images of God's goodness or with words and images that inflame the body and heart to lust and anger. The eyes fill the body with light or with darkness. They take in what the body enjoys and what the heart stores and ponders. I see that such light is not only perceiving things with my eyes, but really "seeing" them. I do not merely look, but I take in certain things and let them settle into my heart.

I must learn to use my eyes to see the Creation. I hear words, really. But I see what they create. I see ideas, inventions, and intentions from words. These are creations, too. When I connect the words to what I see, then I understand. Seeing is the completion of hearing. I hear, "Let there be light" and then I see, "And there was light." My eyes bring to light what words have been spoken in and through myself and also in and through others.

Dallas Willard says, "Faith is not opposed to knowledge, but opposed to sight." Blindness, however, does not necessarily increase faith. It is a matter of precedence. I do not see to believe, but rather I believe so I can see. Faith comes from hearing (Romans 10:14). Then the eyes are the lit lamp that illuminates the body and all creation.

Lord, let me learn how to hear so I can see. Let my seeing fill my body with light and store up treasures in my heart that cannot be stolen or fall into decay. Let my eyes be the lamp of my body. Amen.