Month: June 2012

It seems difficult for some of us to determine just how to apply the Bible’s warnings about being “unequally yoked” with non-believers. What exactly does the term mean and what sorts of human relationships does it apply to?

In the context of farming, particularly pre-industrial farming, unequally yoked oxen would result in crookedly dug furrows during the preparation of arable land. This happened when the larger, stronger animal would pull ahead of the smaller weaker one, causing both the beasts of burden and their plow to go off the straight and narrow path the farmer desired them to tread.

Using this metaphor we can posit that when two people who are spiritually divergent from each other are closely linked together the result will be similar to that of the differently sized-Oxen. A straight path cannot be easily maintained by the Christian in such a circumstance, in this case the “straight and narrow path” of an authentic life of discipleship.

The confusion for the average believer often comes in the form of pondering other biblical verses which indicate that, while we are not of the world, we must live in the world and that means some degree of interaction with non-believers. For example, generally speaking, we must work with those who often do not espouse our creed. We must also relate to family members who do not espouse it either. So unless we are called to be monks (if such a calling even exists) we must expect to continue to be in relationships with those still living in darkness.

The question lies in just how “bonded” such relationships should be. For instance there is a difference between working for a non-Christian and being in a business partnership with one. The employee is usually less responsible for ethical infractions by his boss than by his partner. The very nature of partnership makes both partners responsible for joint decisions. A worker has far less influence than a partner.

The most frequently mentioned human relationship that the “unequally yoked” verse applies to is marriage. It would seem self-evident that two people who do not share the most important thing in life, a saving relationship with God, are not going to do well together as husband and wife. However, even here, some Christians are unmoved enough by the scriptural warning to at least date non-believers. So called “missionary dating” is the term used to describe such liaisons. Unfortunately, more often then not, the Christian in the dating relationship gives up his or her moral standards rather than successfully “converting” the other person.

When asked about the appropriate depth of relational bonds between Christians and non-Christians a pastor friend of mine recently told me that we are best “in contact, but not in contract”. I took this to mean that casual friendships are one thing whereas business partnerships and romantic relationships are quite another. I think there is much wisdom in his words. Let us by all means stay in contact with those around us who need to be exposed to the Gospel in our words and deeds. But let our contracts be reserved for those within the household of faith.

It is vitally important for the contemporary Christian to spend time meditating on the unchanging nature of God and His attributes. This can be greatly facilitated by soundly theological teaching in the churches. In an era when human subjectivity has been nearly deified, or at least elevated to be the basis of personal religion, it is deeply important that the believer in the God of the Bible know some essential truths about just Whom he or she has believed in.

Theological words like omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, transcendence and infinitude may not be very popular these days in evangelical bodies that continually stress “practical” or “relevant” preaching and teaching, but these words must be utilized to help Post-Moderns understand the absolute uniqueness of the Christian Deity. We cannot properly worship a God who we do not understand to be God and these absolute attributes must be made known to foster that understanding in a culture that constantly seeks, whether consciously or unconsciously, to recast God in the image of fallen man.

For instance through the Christian centuries the chief intellectual comfort afforded Christians has come through a proper grasp of the unchanging nature of God. The doctrine of immutability is what gives meaning and reality to all the other aspects of our Lord’s holy nature. We can rely on His goodness, mercy, grace and love to always be there for us only if we believe that these cardinal characteristics are forever unchanging in the fundamental nature of God.

From immutability we can go on to take hold of both a mind and heart understanding of the other things we know that divinity, by nature, must possess and possess without shadow of change. By learning of His changeless character we come to the conviction that God must be all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing and so on and that he always must be so.

In fact each absolute attribute tends to re-enforce the others, and for believers who begin to know this through the use of the logical mind our Creator has gifted us with doubts about the absolute trustworthiness of God start to fade.

So much of the confusion that plagues professed Christians today has its source in simple theological ignorance. If we live in a time when people do not know quite what to make of the Lord they say they follow it behooves us to ask if part of the problem is found in churches that are either unwilling or unable to put across basic understandings about the nature of that Lord. Understanding that was gleaned from Holy Spirit-empowered reason in the minds of the great saints who participated in the great counsels of the first few centuries of Christianity are seemingly ignored in far too many congregations today. These counsels simply took the words of God Himself in the Scriptures and drew elementary truths about His nature from those words.

Confusion about who God really is can become absolutely deadly to authentic Christian faith. In a time when so many sub-Christian religions and philosophies are vying for the hearts and minds of human beings and when people’s convictions about the nature of God are often formed by memories of abusive human authority figures we must strive to show people who God is by an understandable, yet uncompromising, return to sound theological training. Only in this way will human subjectivity not overwhelm struggling Christians who desperately need to know objective truth about their God, and be set free to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

Note: The author is grateful to A.W. Tozer and his book “The Knowledge of the Holy” for inspiring the main theme of this meditation.

If you have been a Christian for any length of time you have likely met people who clearly are not believers but who act better then many Christians you have known. These are the family, friends and co-workers who seem more naturally loving, generous and good-natured than some of the people with whom you attend church. It is not difficult to become puzzled by such individuals. Aren’t the true children of God supposed to be the nicest people around?

I once heard a pastor refer to these unbelieving, but lovable human beings, as “persons of good will.” The phrase clicked with me and I’ve often used it since. Yet the question still remains in my mind as to how those who are still trapped in darkness can seem to radiate so much light, sometimes even more apparent light than I. It seems to be a theological conundrum. But is it?

When C.S. Lewis was faced with such acquaintances in his own day, he concluded that the important question to ask would be: What would Christians be like as people if they remained unconverted, and what would the unconverted be like if they were to become Christians? He concluded that some difficult Christians might have turned out to be far more difficult if they stayed in their natural state and some kind pagans, once brought to saving faith, would become far kinder.

This is an intriguing thought, and a valid point, but it still does not address the theological ramifications behind the Agnostic you work with who is one of the most pleasant people you have ever known. Just what accounts for that “pleasant-ness”?

I believe the answer lies in the realm of “common grace”, a term describing God’s proclivity to bless both the just and the unjust (or, perhaps better stated, the justified and the unjustified.) We know from Scripture that our Lord sends his rain to equally water the fields of the good and the wicked. His love is such that it is shed upon the entire race of creatures made in His image. Perhaps this “love shed abroad” also manifests itself in the imputation of a certain, varying degree of goodness in unbelieving people.

It is sound biblical doctrine that all that is good within us, apart from saving grace, is not in any way meritorious towards our salvation. Still, I believe that through common grace there is some good imputed to most if not all human beings. That good, however, must be recognized as an unearned gift from God and one that also is completely unrelated to saving faith in His Son. Further, it must be considered that such “natural goodness” most likely departs forever from the soul who never receives the infinitely greater goodness that comes only from the redemption offered to all human beings in Jesus Christ.

This has important implications for we who have known that redemption and who have persons of good will in our lives. It is vital for their eternal welfare that we not equate their apparent virtue with any less of an absolute need for salvation than that of our nasty boss or our malicious relative. As nice as some non-believers may be they are still either actively or passively rejecting the claim of God on their lives and thus are just as much in need of the witness of the Gospel as any other lost person who crosses our path. We dare not mistake this manifested “good will” in them for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the saved because one is only emblematic of the temporary and, in a sense, the self deceiving. The other is eternal life itself.

We live in a world of loss. This is the lot of a fallen race living on a fallen planet. Nothing temporal, that is nothing that we possess only in this life, is permanent in this life. Our family, our friends, our material possessions, our health; none of these things in their present form go with us beyond the grave. Also, to one degree or another, we will lose quite a few of them long before that. This reality accounts for much of the existential anxiety that all human beings feel to some degree in life.

For those of us who are Christians the hope of an unchanging inheritance in Heaven assuages some of this angst. Yet even believers are not untouched by loss, nor are we untouched by the pain that accompanies it. Any Pollyanna Christian who tells you otherwise is either lying to themselves or has not yet sustained a profound loss in their earthly existence.

So until the restoration of all things occurs upon our arrival in the New Heavens and on the New Earth we need something to safely grasp now when the things we hold dear are always in danger of being wrenched from our lives.

The obvious “something” is, of course, actually a “Someone”. We can and must cling to our unchanging God if we are to keep our sanity in a world where the deep need for permanence that He Himself instilled in us is constantly frustrated by the curse of sin we have brought upon ourselves. Part of that “clinging” is cultivating an aspect of faith that derives from a deep intellectual grasp of a particular attribute of the divine nature. That attribute is God’s immutability.

Immutability implies a few things. For instance it means that our Lord is unchanging in His fundamental nature. He cannot be changed by any external force and he will not change Himself internally because innate perfection, by definition, requires no change. However it is a specific fact of immutability that we concern ourselves with here and that is the fact that nothing is ever finally lost from God that is intrinsically of God. He is never, ever permanently diminished in the essence of Who He is.

To come to the settled conviction that this is true can be deeply reassuring to we children of God who are also, if only temporarily, “children of loss” as well. Somehow there is a kind of vicarious comfort in knowing that our God Himself cannot be in any way lessened or reduced. It is good to know that the reality of potential human loss is not under any circumstances able to extend itself to that which is innate to God. Even the temporary separation of Father and Son in the atonement was just that, temporary. It was also divinely willed, not forced upon God from outside. Father, Son and Spirit cannot be finally lost to each other. Such is the immutability of the divine.

Admittedly this intellectual recognition that there is Someone in the Universe who cannot suffer permanent loss is not the be all and end all of our consolation. For one thing intellectual recognition must become heart recognition as well to be most fully effective. For another knowing this truth on both levels will likely still not result in our becoming impervious to all the pangs of personal loss.

But in coming to apprehend that God is unchanging and impervious to internal loss we can also come closer to knowing another shining truth. The God who cannot lose Himself will Himself see to it that what we have lost in this life will be fully made up for someday. If we belong to Him this will be one of the gifts of Heaven, and that gift will be immutable as well.

Things are so often not what they seem. This is a statement that applies to the human condition whether the humans being referred to are believers or non-believers. It is a profound reality in the world as it now is and will be for as long as the world as a whole remains unredeemed.

Understanding that this is so is a very important requirement for Christian living that is both authentic and healthy. It is also important to understand that the spirit of deception seems to be becoming ever more pervasive in the opening decades of the twenty-First century. We live in an era when thousands of voices, many purporting to be Christian, are competing for our attention and doing so through an electronic media that is still growing in its already massive influence. The results are a multitude of ways to perceive “reality”, including the ultimate form of reality claimed by Christianity.

The Bible tells us that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but which leads to death”. As someone also once said it is eminently possible for a person to be “sincerely wrong”. Many are those in the Church today who have very sincere, yet differing, perspectives on what it means or doesn’t mean to be a disciple of Christ. The question is who is truly speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and who is not? With so many of the aforementioned voices out there it is becoming, in my view, harder and harder to know.

In 20 years of faith I have heard a myriad of takes on what true Christianity is and what it isn’t on both a macro and micro level. The winds of doctrine continue to blow and added to them we now have a number of not specifically-biblical philosophies that many of us are trying to safely interpret through a biblical lens. The social revolution that the West has gone through over the past four or five decades has introduced a multiplicity of “worldviews” which the thinking Christian cannot cavalierly dismiss. Every age has required believers in Jesus Christ to “take the good and leave the bad”, so to speak, as far as the surrounding culture. This age is no different, except in one cardinal way. We have to deal with much more available information than our forebears who did not have to contend with what might be called the “global electronic information hive”.

The airwaves and the internet are full of supposedly Christian voices that sound believable, yet have a tendency to subtlety or not so subtlety contradict one another. The result, it seems, are congregations of people who, already being too immersed in secular pop culture, are also becoming too open to the contemporary idea that one can hold multiple positions on what were once black and white issues.

Admittedly there are legitimate differences of opinion about just what is black and white and what is “grey” in following the God of the Bible. This has always been true and has always set off debate within the Church. But today we seem to be entering a period when almost anything can be made grey just as long as one can find enough internet bloggers disagreeing about it!

The basic heart of any debate is the fact of one person thinking that the other doesn’t understand what is true and what isn’t. This brings us back to the opening statement of this essay that “things are so often not what they seem”. As Twenty-First Century Christians we are in the process of becoming so overwhelmed with hearing differing visions of true faith, each of which seems reasonable, that we can no longer hear the still, small voice of the Spirit amid the din. If we in the process lose all ability to hear that voice of absolute truth then we are, simply put, lost.

The Bible speaks of a great apostasy that will mark the Church in the closing days of this dying age. I do not think it extreme to propose that we have entered into that period. The Scripture says that where “there is no vision the people perish”. Is it unreasonable to posit that the same is true when there are too many visions?

I believe God, in Christ, wants to somehow share His very nature with us, to in some sense enable us to enter into the experience of His absolute blessedness to the extent we can as creatures. From what I think is a biblical perspective this is our Lord’s goal for us, beginning in this life and being brought to fullness in the next. He not only lovingly desires our presence with Him but, beyond that, God also longs for us actually to share in His eternal character.

I think sometimes we resist this because it seems overwhelming to imagine being so blessed of the Father as to actually partake in His very essence. The immensity of the divine is intimidating to sinners saved by grace, or at least it can be. Beyond that the very idea of being so honored as to be the recipient of such a gift as the nature of Christ certainly doesn’t square with who we feel ourselves to be at our worst moments. It also seems beyond our present faculties to imagine being so gifted and, to some degree, this is true. It takes a great deal of faith-informed intellect just to think about the implications of being transformed into the likeness of the Son of God, and thus the likeness of God Himself.

We might also have trouble with the idea that it is somehow presumptuous for us to desire such a thing. How can we presume to be in any way like God? Isn’t that the original satanic temptation, the one that ruined our race to begin with? It is certainly true that we are never to desire to “be God”. It is the greatest evil possible to want such a thing, but that is not what we are discussing. We are contemplating, instead, the idea of sharing in the glory of our Father according to His own loving will and only by the transformative power of His own hand.

If we can get past the immensity of the implication of knowing something of God’s nature as our own someday, as well as our fears about wanting it wrongly, we can enter into a wonderful sense of anticipation.

One of the cardinal attributes of God is His perfection. As beings made in His image we all, whether we know it consciously or not, want to be perfect ourselves. The fallen human answer to that inherent need is the cursed attempt to become perfect in our own strength that we call perfectionism. Perfectionism is the very oxymoronic definition of “works-righteousness” and all too many of us have harmed ourselves, and offended God, by practicing it. For those of us who desire to fully repent of perfectionism the idea of having God’s perfection given us through the unearned gift of grace available in Jesus Christ can be both a deeply comforting and deeply revitalizing thought. And if being made perfect in this way seems at all cold and uninviting remember that it is part of the divine perfection to be perfectly and eternally whole, with all the overflowing joy that implies. If we are made holy as He is holy we are embarking on an eternity of holy bliss for, as Psalm 16:11 tells us, “at His right hand are pleasures forevermore”.

So it is no sin to meditate on what God, in his infinite kindness, plans to be the final state of His adopted Children. It is, in fact, a part of “the blessed hope” we are all called to contemplate on a regular basis as we continue to walk out our pilgrimage through this temporary state of existence we call our present life. Thinking rightly about how our God intends to share His perfect blessedness with us someday, forevermore, cannot help but be a powerful encouragement as we wait for our final rescue from both our fallen world and our fallen selves.

If you have been a believer for very long you have probably heard some people in your church talk about the desirability of Heaven with a certain degree of hesitation, a degree of doubt. These are the brethren who find themselves wondering if the dwelling place of the blessed is some kind of an “eternal worship service”. By this they mean the idea of spending all eternity singing literally endless choruses of hymns before the throne of God as they do for 20 or 30 minutes before a worship band or a choir on a platform on a typical Sunday morning. For some this idea is not yet a very appealing one.

I will not argue here about exactly what Heaven may be besides an eternal worship service. I do wish to submit that, for those who have at any time been caught up into the presence of God through corporate worship in song (or individual worship in song for that matter), such a Heaven isn’t something to dread. It is instead something to be deeply desired, for to feel God’s habitation of His peoples’ adoration, as one of those people, is perhaps the greatest “high” any human being can ever experience in this life. Those who only know boredom during such times simply have not yet been willing or able to truly focus on the One such times are centered around.

I say this not to discourage the believer who has not yet experienced the spiritual delight of worship. I have only begun to more consistently experience this delight myself in the last few years of my own two decades of faith. Many factors can negatively effect being caught up in holy veneration of our Lord and not all of them are our fault. Moreover, if any Christian sincerely purposes in his or her heart to focus on the reality of the divine during times of corporate worship, no matter whether it evokes good feelings or not, those feelings will come eventually. The whole purpose of worship, remember, is to express our deep love and loyalty to the God Who has so loved us. Rapturous feelings of connection with Him are sometimes a wonderful result of loving God in this way, but they are not the object. The object of worship is to honor God’s infinite worth with our wills. In a sense the purpose of worship is worship. It is its own fulfillment.

That said we cannot forget that Heaven is the ultimate place of worship, a place where every earthly barrier to the vital adoration of our Creator has been completely and permanently removed, and for the true child of God, looking forward to this can be a source of sometimes overwhelming joy.

In Heaven the conscious adulation we will know is also the ultimate connection, the ultimate consummation, the absolute perfection of our union with God. In heavenly worship we will be caught up into our Lord as we but tasted when we attempted to focus on Him on Earth. In our present frame we just cannot fully grasp how wondrous this will be. It is the answer to our heart’s truest desire. What could be better than experiencing that which will connect us with Him as nothing else presently can, as nothing else is meant to while we still sojourn on this fallen planet and “see through a glass darkly”? This is what we were born and re-born for! It is our destiny and our purpose. We were made to glorify our Lord and Savior and we will not be truly whole and happy until we can do so in the paradise of His absolute presence in His Son, Jesus Christ, in the place that Son prepares for us.

Remember this the next time you sing in church. Contemplate the ramifications of worship both now and one day in Heaven. Let your mind and heart ponder the goodness of your God as you sing to and for Him. My prayer is that, as you do, the idea of someday entering into an “eternal worship service” will become a source of joyful expectancy, no longer something to mistakenly dread.

People often talk about the prospect of those whom they love or respect receiving something good in their lives in terms of them “deserving it”. This is a regular part of the congratulatory vernacular of most people today, including many Christians. Unfortunately it does not reflect spiritual truth. Strictly speaking, none who have walked the Earth since Adam and Eve’s fall “deserve” anything good happening to them. The idea that people do owes more to Post-Modern hyper-individualism and the pride that such individualism too often engenders. In a secular culture where “self-esteem” is most often derived from man rather than God the use of such phraseology is to be expected and should not be particularly shocking. What is a bit surprising is how often believers jump on the “he/she/they deserve it” bandwagon when a blessing from God is bestowed on someone or some group.

Devout and biblically-informed Christians in earlier eras of the Church generally had no such illusions about blessings. Rather than exclaiming how deserving the recipient was they were far more apt to praise God for His mercy and grace when something good happened to that recipient. Christians of the past knew that no sinner, even a redeemed one, had earned blessing in and of themselves. They recognized that in a Christian context the very idea was oxymoronic. So should we.

I understand that telling someone whom we regard highly that they “deserve” a good job or spouse or a nice home comes very naturally to us and is our way of expressing personal regard and respect. But it does not do the recipient any good. It certainly does not help them to understand the grace of God and it may well hinder such an understanding. How can they grasp the idea of “unmerited favor” when we are telling them that such favor is merited by their actions? In our seemingly innocent good intentions we are only giving them reason for pride and an accompanying sense of entitlement.

You might object that when someone does a good job they at least deserve accolades for doing it. This may be true but keep this in mind: no one has the power to do good in and of themselves, no one. Every good thing we do in this life is made possible by God. Such things may come through common grace in the case of unbelievers or sanctifying grace in the case of Christians but, either way, they come from God not us.

This does not mean, however, that we have license to go around telling every blessed soul that they are rotten sinners who do not deserve anything from God but punishment or chastisement. I am not trying to make a case for making someone feel rotten when something nice happens to them. I am simply saying that it is untrue to say that anyone is intrinsically deserving of good. When that nice thing happens we would do better to say something like “Praise God for blessing you with that job, wife or home. I’m so happy that He did this thing for you because I love you and it is wonderful to see how much He loves you too.”

To shift from “I’m happy for you, you deserve it” to “I’m happy for you, praise God for His love” may not come easily for those of us who have taken on the colloquialisms of the world without even being consciously aware of it. Indeed I must confess that I have been among those who have said “you deserve it”, but I say it less and less as time goes on and I get a better idea of how little good I deserve and how much good I am given by God anyway.

Part of the sanctification of Post-Modern, Western Christians is a gradual rejection of things that Post-Modern, Western culture tells us are justified in favor of things the Justifier would have us adopt as His children. Giving up the phrase “you deserve it” may not seem like a very important part of that process, and it may not be, but it is a part of it nonetheless.