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Copyright by Shea Oakley

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“Forgiveness is agreeing to live with the consequences of another person’s sin.”

There are doubtless numerous definitions of forgiveness. Because the imperative to forgive is so primary to living an authentic Christian life believers through the centuries have tried to describe its essence in different ways. There are many facets of forgiveness that must be gleaned to make up an overall definition.

One of those facets is described well by the above quote from Christian author Neil Anderson. In fact his characterization of granting pardon is one of the more profound in its simplicity. It is also one of the most difficult to accept. I suspect this is because “agreeing to live with the consequences” of someone else’s careless or malevolent wounding of our spirits seems like the height of unfairness. There is no way around the reality of that perceived iniquity. But we need to recognize that the world we live in is no longer fair. We also have to leave the blame for this reality where it belongs, on our own race’s corporate doorstep.

Human beings cry “unfair!” for a reason. We have an innate understanding that things should be equitable in relationships. This is no accident. Each of us is made in God’s image and so we have, somewhere deep down in our very being, the sense that ultimate reality is void of relational wrongs. This is true. There is no unfairness in the perfect unity of the Trinity. While some might interject here that it was unfair for God, the Father, to will His innocent Son to die the horrific death of the cross the truth is that Jesus went to Calvary willingly. His Father did not bully him into it. It was an act of love, designed to bring the potential for our forgiveness, and therein lays the rub.

Love and forgiveness trump unfairness.

The world knows iniquity only because the first human beings choose to cooperate with the one who might be called the “Essence of Unfair”, Satan. Thefall of our race is what has made the lives we now live on Earth subject to injustice. We have no one to blame but ourselves, both collectively and individually. If we let it stop there the result could only be despair. We would face the prospect of an ongoing existence as evil beings with no recourse but to forever wound and be wounded by each other and eventually die in that condition. Our now intrinsically unfair natures would see to this and all the while our lying egos would assure us that only we have been untreated unfairly. In a sense this is what the idea of “Hell on Earth” means.

But because of Jesus bearing the greatest unfairness of all, His wholly undeserved death and bearing of sin that was not his own, we who believe are on the road to ultimate redemption from the presence and results of our inequity. Divine love is more powerful than unfairness and it can set the human race free from the captivity of our fallen nature.

This brings us back to the question of forgiveness. The reason Christians can forgive others is twofold. Reason one is because we come to know that “the consequences of another person’s sin” against us may not be worse that than the consequences of our own sin against someone else. In short, we reckon with the fact that we are not always fair ourselves, both to others and to the perfectly fair God we have vowed to serve. Reason two is that we who have put our faith in Jesus Christ know that the destructive consequences of other people’s sins in our lives are not permanent. Even if we do not experience complete healing in this life God promises to “wipe away every tear” when our redemption is completed and we stand before him in Glory. In the meantime, because of this hope, we have access to the grace we need to bear temporary pain and to consciously extend forgiveness to the people who caused that pain. Received grace, the unmerited favor of God through Christ, is the wellspring of forgiveness. This is true even in the midst of still-experienced relational hurts. By an act of grace-empowered will we can live with the consequences of their sin, and our own, letting love and forgiveness alter the equation. In doing so we will begin to free ourselves to find a degree of healing even in the here and now.

There is no better way to trump unfairness then in knowing the beginnings of the healing of our hearts.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

What is the place of human happiness in the economy of God? The world often tells us that nothing is more important than its pursuit. In fact “the pursuit of happiness” is so important in the national zeitgeist of America that it is literally enshrined in our nation’s constitution. But seeking happiness at any cost is not the counsel of Scripture. Seeking God at any cost is.

When good feelings are put at the center of our aspirations we become Hedonists and Hedonism is a form of idolatry. In fact the argument could be made that the all-out quest for personal happiness may, in and of itself, constitute a complete false religious system in our times. If seen in that light it may not be too far from the mark to suggest that this system is the de facto majority religion of the 21st Century Western world. If you ask the average person on the street in the United States or Europe today what they want most out of life it is a fair bet that he or she will tell you that they “just want to be happy”. Even a less self-seeking answer to the same question usually revolves around happiness. Often the hope is expressed that someone near and dear may achieve it, most often the inquiree’s children.

Of course gladness of heart is not intrinsically evil. It may be presumed from the Bible that it is even a large part of God’s ultimate will in offering redemption to his fallen human creation. Yet the Bible is also quite clear that the chief purpose of man is to glorify God above all other goals. Whatever true happiness we can hope for here is a direct function of worshipping and obeying God simply because He is our Creator and He is holy. We must love God primarily because of who He is intrinsically, not because of what He can do for us.

Such devotion may sound patently impossible to we who are essentially born with self-fulfillment as our natural “default setting”, but it is not impossible if the perfect beauty and righteousness of God captures our hearts. This is only able to happen because, in Christ, He loves us with a love so pure and powerful that our hearts can be awakened to that beauty and righteousness. When this occurs we end up loving Him above all things, including our own temporal happiness, because He first loved us. The place where that kind of love was most perfectly made manifest is at the cross, and it is only there that we learn to exchange our demand for bliss for the higher goal of blessing Him.

The sweet paradox in all this is that, in first seeking God’s glorification in our lives, we obtain much temporal happiness in our earthly existence and ultimately the promise of eternal happiness as well. The degree to which our hearts are truly surrendered to God in this present life will determine how happy we will be in the here and now. The happiest people on Earth are those who are in intimate union with Jesus Christ and, in grace beyond all measure, they are further promised perfect and infinite happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven.

So being happy is not a bad thing if it is not elevated above God as an object of worship. When rightly seen as a byproduct of knowing our Lord as our first priority it is put in its proper place, and then released into our hearts.

That very prospect is something to be happy about!

Copyright by Shea Oakley.
All rights reserved.

Perfection without love is not perfection at all. Human perfectionism is most often a cold, hard thing. It is only concerned with reaching the highest possible level of performance, the highest level that self-effort can achieve. It has everything to do with pride and nothing to do with love.

It is well to remember an aspect of the revealed nature of the One by whom everything is measured. The God of the Bible is described as love. In fact His love for us is declared to be perfect love. He is also known as the giver of grace to His fallen creation. Part of our Lord’s perfection includes the bestowal of unmerited favor, even to those who do not know, or care to know, Him. God’s grace can also be assumed to be perfect as it is an outworking of His nature.

The truth of this, if received, is the greatest source of comfort a human being can ever know. Perfect love implies a love so pure and so strong that it can overcome the deepest darkness we might encounter during our earthly pilgrimage. Perfect grace extends that to include the darkness that dwells in our own souls as well. Whether it is within or without, the evil that once indwelt us as unbelievers cannot the withstand divine perfection now working within our surrendered lives Upon receiving Jesus Christ this perfection is imparted to the new believer. At that moment we become flawless, unblemished in His sight. That reality is then worked out within us over time through the process of sanctification.

Notice that we receive this faultlessness, we do not achieve it. True perfection is only gained by accepting God’s perfection, and that as a gift. Any human attempt to reach this condition autonomously is, by definition, doomed to failure. It is inherently flawed because it is in no way related to the source and embodiment of all that is perfect. If God is not both present in, and master of, the life of a human being that human being remains profoundly flawed and that which is flawed in any way ultimately can never dwell with Him, in this life or the next. The imparted perfection of God, in and though Christ, is ultimately the only way to find what so many profoundly frustrated perfectionists are looking for.

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley
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“The more light we have, the more we shall see our own imperfection.” -J.C. Ryle

Any sincere Christian who has sought over time to draw closer to the Lord has experienced the truth of Ryle’s observation. The closer we come to the light of God, the more that light penetrates into our hearts. What His light often illuminates is a depth of negative attitudes and tendencies that we did not think we could possibly contain. The holiness of God, apprehended by us, uncomfortably reveals our own lack of holiness.

The rooting out of sinful habits of thought and action is a progressive process that continues throughout our lives. In His superintending of this process it appears that God knows just how much self-revelation we can take at one time without falling into complete despair. For instance, if we were suddenly forced to confront the entirety of our remaining leanings towards wickedness in a moment it might be more than we could bear. It might induce such horror that we would be destroyed by it. So God, in His mercy, reveals what we need to be cleansed from only as we become ready to face it. This is part of the nature of sanctification.

So what can believers do when they come to have a new awareness of previously unsuspected strongholds of sin in their lives? Perhaps the first thing we could do is thank God for that awareness. While this process is unpleasant it proves that we are still on the road to Heaven. We would not experience this progressive unveiling of our personal proclivity for certain sins if we were not truly seeking after God and the Holy Spirit was not actively working in our lives to change our hearts into the likeness of Christ. We can also thank Him because now that we see within ourselves what needs to be repented of we are ready to cooperate with the Spirit to be cleansed from this particular unrighteousness, if it is something we are unknowingly practicing.

Progressively convicted Christians can also respond to such a revelation by humbling themselves and coming to understand yet one more reason why they are not in a position to judge others. Sometimes it seems that God reveals our hidden sin just in time, for instance just as we are preparing to harshly judge another human being. If we are willing to receive the truth He is communicating to us we can be saved from judging that person and thus opening ourselves up to being judged. Thus humility is also the potential fruit of being confronted by sinful tendencies in our lives that we did not know we had.

Finally there is the realization of our dependence on God that this process makes possible. We are again reminded that we are truly lost without Him because if He did not reveal the temptations in our lives that we must turn from we could ultimately be ruined by giving in to those tendencies. For this reason we need not inordinately fear the unveiling of our souls by the penetrating light of our Lord. He shows us our remaining imperfections out of love for us. It is like a good surgeon who probes deeper than we might like to make sure he has gotten all of the cancer in our bodies. The surgeon has our best interests in mind and he knows that the pain that is associated with the discovery and removal of more cancer is the necessary byproduct of his effort to rid us of it.

How much more should we expect this from the Great Physician who is also our loving Father?

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley
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There is much to be said for a raw emotional honesty before God, however it may manifest itself. Whether we cry out with a broken heart, express deep anger or shout for joy in His presence, the God of the Universe does not begrudge us our emotional outbursts. I believe He would prefer that we engage in an open and genuine discourse with Him rather than display a forced and false outward piety. He knows what is really going on inside of us anyway; we might do well to acknowledge that fact and voluntarily share our deepest feelings with Him. God is not insecure. He can handle seeing what comes out of us at our worst moments as well as our best, even when the pain and anger we express is directed toward Him.

Despite this, many sons and daughters of God are terribly afraid of being “real” in the presence of their Lord. I knew of one man who was so fearful of expressing his anger toward God about great misfortunes in his life that he would physically injure himself instead of confronting the Lord (or anyone else.) The result was not just an injury but a continued emotional paralysis that, at least partially, prevented him from doing anything constructive about the afflictions that made his life so miserable. I believe the primary reason he would not allow himself be openly angry with God was his great dread about how God would respond.

If we look in Scripture, we find many emotional outbursts of various kinds in front of the Lord, often coming from people dear in His sight. Many names come to mind, with David, Job, Jeremiah and Peter among them. Sometimes they may have said the wrong things to Him in wrong ways. They are not severely punished by their Creator and Redeemer. Although they may have suffered intensely emotional experiences, they all continue to be men of great faith to the end of their lives. They also continued to be loved by a God who never stopped blessing them throughout their lives.

It is true that our Lord, a perfect and perfectly loving being, is incapable of acting in a way that legitimately warrants our wrath. So, the Lord never deserves our negative emotions directed toward Him. But, there is a huge difference between willful anger toward God as a continued state of being and an instance of emotional honesty. The latter can open the door to a cathartic release, repentance, and renewed relationship with God. More than once in my own life I found that after I “had it out” with God, I came to a new place of love for and appreciation for who He is and how He continues to lavish abundant and unmerited grace and love on me.

The Bible tells us that the One in whom we have placed our faith desires “truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6). It may be that such truth cannot continue to exist if something deep within us remains un-confessed by a refusal to bare our emotional selves to Him. Could it be that stuffing our feelings may damage our innermost being? I think so. At the very least, a lack of emotional intimacy with God thwarts our spiritual growth and sanctification. It seems much better, on all counts, that we outwardly express to God what is going on within our hearts.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

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Love, by definition, desires the best for its object. In the Scriptures we are told that God is love. Only the ultimate, perfect love issuing forth from the heart of God is powerful enough to fully actualize that best; both for and in us.

Every human being is fallen. We are all in need of complete transformation from the inside out to change us from the profoundly darkened creatures we have become to the perfected children of the most high we will be. Human love, no matter how intense and long-lasting, does not have the transformative power necessary to achieve this in us. While it is true that God can use our love for one another to further our metamorphosis into beings who more fully reflect His likeness this “horizontal love” cannot be a substitute for the “Vertical Love” that comes directly from the Father through the Son.

The problem with affection between persons is that it is never completely without self-interest and is always prone to variation. Our Lord is not susceptible to either of these imperfections. He is an inexhaustible source of selfless and constant love because he completely embodies love itself, and He is perfect as well as all-powerful in all His attributes.

Our Creator wants the best for us above all others because He loves us above all others. With his will wedded to His power it becomes possible for us to receive that best. We who belong to Him are literally being loved into the greatest possible thing we could ever hope to become, a being completely remade in the full image of God.

If we could just grasp the reality of this truth we could cease our striving to be “lovable enough” to God, other people and ourselves. To be the focus of divine love, and to know it, is to be set free from looking for love “in all the wrong places”. We can allow ourselves to be loved by the one Person whose care and affection for us is unconditional and sufficient for every circumstance we face, no matter how difficult it might appear. God’s love trumps every obstacle we face in life if we understand and receive it as it is given: in the perfect power of the divine.

Because God is love, and because we are the apple of His eye, those of us who bear the name “Christian” can fully trust that the best possible outcome for our individual existence is assured. This is the legacy the Lover of our souls will bequeath us on that day when our relationship is consummated in full and final union with His Christ. It is the best thing that we could ever hope for. In fact it is better even than that because His best for us is beyond what we could ever dream or imagine.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

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About 10 years ago a prominent Evangelical leader made a statement that was long overdue. He told his audience that the biggest threat to the family today is not homosexuality but divorce. In the midst of our resistance to the growing acceptance of the gay lifestyle we have ignored a much greater danger. As the Evangelical divorce rate in America has soared in recent years many churches have failed to recognize the more urgent priority of reinforcing marriages.

According to the latest polls the percentage of Christian marriages ending in divorce is around 50%. It is important to note that these polls also include second marriages ending, so they are not indicative of the failure rate of first marriages alone. The numbers would be considerably lower Vis a Vis the secular statistics if only first marriages were included. The rate for Evangelicals would then be closer to 25%. But even these lower numbers leave us with the sobering realization that far too many Christian families are being torn apart.

The most tragic result of divorce is its effect on children. Studies have shown that children who come from broken homes are more likely to suffer depression, anxiety and learning disorders. They also tend to be more prone to engaging in drinking, drug use and illicit sex. The alienation and despair that is increasingly common among adolescents shadows the increase in divorces. The bottom line is that we are badly damaging our kids insuring, among other things, that their own attempts to bond in life-long unions will likely be even more problematic than our own.

With just the stark evidence of what failed marriages produce in our children alone one might think that churches would be doing everything in their power to insure that Christian unions survive. No doubt some are and for that they should be commended and emulated, but unfortunately what seems to be happening instead in too much of the Evangelical subculture is a growing tolerance of divorce. The stigma of a failed marriage is no longer as powerful a deterrent as it was in years past. These days’ marriages ending among Christians, is more often labeled “tragic” than sinful. Such a value-neutral term seems a bit dissembling for a people whose God clearly states that He hates divorce.

It should never be an easy thing for a believing couple to jointly dissolve a union whose foundation rests on vows they have made to one another before God. To start with the Church needs to support the few recent secular legal initiatives designed to make it more difficult to divorce. Pre-marital counseling should be vigorous, in depth, and occur over a longer period of time then is sometimes the case today. Divorce outside the scriptural guidelines regarding unrepentant adultery or abandonment by an unbelieving spouse should be strongly and unapologetically spoken against from the pulpit and not just occasionally. Finally husbands and wives who plan to ignore pastoral counsel and end their marriages for un-biblical reasons should know beforehand that their church will biblically discipline them if they choose to sin in this way.

If this sounds overly stern to some ears it should be remembered that for most of the history of Christianity divorce has been very strongly discouraged. Its one thing to single-out already divorced people for special censure and another to do every thing possible to discourage them from becoming divorcees in the first place. For centuries there was a healthy fear of both the spiritual and temporal consequences of ending a marriage. The fact is that the advent of a higher tolerance for divorce during recent years is not a sign of a progressive church but a regressive one. We might do well to remember that 2000 years ago Jesus Christ Himself roundly condemned a religion that had made divorce easy to justify and obtain. That fact alone should give pause to many a married believer considering his or her options.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
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Experiencing pain is hard, but the result of avoiding pain is much harder. The pain I speak of is necessary pain. This is the discomfort involved in confronting that within us which is both the result of what we have done to others and the result of what has been done to us. It is the pain that precedes repentance and it is the pain that precedes healing Allowing ourselves to experience both kinds are unavoidable if we hope to live an authentic Christian life.

But avoid them we do.

I’ve never known a true masochist, an individual who consciously derives pleasure from pain. Most of us are all about avoiding it. God does not begrudge us that desire in and of itself. The myriad aches we today experience as human beings were not part of the original plan. Adam and Eve knew no pain in Eden until the moment they choose to disobey the only demand their Creator gave them, to not eat of the Tree of Good and Evil. Pain was, and is, the necessary consequence of our rebellion against a just God. We need not have experienced it as a race had we had remained obedient to the One who deserved no disobedience from us. That we do know pain in this life is the greatest evidence that the biblical account of the Fall is true.

God takes no pleasure in misery for its own sake. If He did He would be a cosmic sadist and the God of the cross could not possibly be that. He looks at the afflictions of humankind as the necessary result of transgression against him, but he does not enjoy it. If He did Jesus would never have been sent to us.

So all of the sons and daughters of Adam must know pain in this world. It is part of a just curse upon a fallen race. However, for the blood-bought son or daughter of God, pain has a particular role to play. This role is two-fold, to show us our need for healing and to show us our need for Godly sorrow over what we have done to cause others to need healing. Without this kind of pain we would forever remain wounded and wounding. Without it we would not know something is terribly wrong in our souls.

Physically it is better to feel the agony of a second-degree burn than the numbness of a third-degree burn. Why? Because the pain of the former indicates that the affected nerves and tissues are still capable of healing, the lack of feeling in the latter means that both nerve and tissue have been completely destroyed. Pain is nature’s (and by extension God’s) way of sounding the alarm that something is not as it should or could be. It tells us we need to do something about a problem.

Whether that problem stems from what we have done, or what has been done to us, pain is often what brings it to our attention. But we have an option when such a feeling begins to make itself known. We can choose the path of avoidance.

Every mood-altering substance, action or possession known to human beings is potentially an enabler for such avoidance. Alcohol, sex and money are respective examples of each. Drunkenness, promiscuity and compulsive shopping are all pain-avoiders. All seem to promise an easy alternative to experiencing the hurt that is endemic to our existence. This is a cruel illusion. Most of those who do not know God will, to one degree or another, take this route. It is, for them, a dead-end. The pain they avoid is exchanged for greater pain latter on, compounded by the sinful activity’s destructive effects on their bodies and souls.

Those who know God can choose this route as well; and I daresay that every Christian has chosen to detour down it at some point. We are not immune to the siren-call of avoidant behavior either. But in the power of the Spirit living within us we can choose to go another way. We can embrace our pain and ask God to use our experience of that pain to change us for the better. When we do this in sincerity He will honor our willingness to trust Him and the pain we then enter into and endure will be profoundly redemptive. It will result in the purification and growth of our hearts and prepare us for the Godly joys God wants all his children to know, the greatest of which is a deeper intimacy with Him.

When pain seems unavoidable it probably is. Our best reaction is to accept it after asking our Lord to use it to bring about His loving plan for our lives. Learning to react to pain in this way is one of the most important lessons of the Christian life. It is not easily accepted, and we should not expect it to be so, but once we have learned this lesson we will ultimately be taken beyond the hurt we experience to a place of blessing that will make that hurt pale by comparison.

Then the pain will have been worth it beyond what we ever could have imagined.