gospel

Holiness and Mercy

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I was watching a podcast video with Andy Chrisman and Steve Camp talking about how Steve took such a bold stand in the late 90s against what was going on in the Christian music industry at the time. He also spoke about a couple of his songs related to the emerging AIDS crisis in the 80s. One phrase that stood out to me was “holiness never compromised, mercy never restrained.”

That’s the essence of the gospel. We’re never to tolerate sin in the name of mercy, but we’re also never to condemn the sinner in the name of holiness. The same Jesus that told the woman that He didn’t condemn her for her adultery also said, “Go and sin no more.”

Jesus never accommodated sinful lifestyles, but He also never withheld His love from those in those lifestyles who earnestly sought Him in their need. The message He proclaimed was not “I’m OK, you’re OK, just do the best you can” but “I’m calling you out of your sin into something better because I love you enough to want God’s best for you.”

I can’t say that I’m the best at balancing holiness and mercy. I can testify that I’m really good at looking down on sins that I don’t struggle with. I can be more permissive with my own faults than forgiving of others with theirs.

But I believe that Jesus is the one who perfectly embodies holiness and mercy as the 100% God, 100% man who is both just and the justifier. I believe in the gospel message that Jesus can change and transform anybody from anything into something holy. I’m seeing it in my own life and in so many lives of the people I know and love.

The challenge is to hold to both holiness and mercy, not pitting one against the other or elevating one at the expense of the other. We need both. Most of all, we all need Jesus.

Nothing Else Will Do

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I’m excited. My church is weeks away from moving to a permanent campus where everything will be brand new and shiny. I’m reminded of the metaphor Jesus used about believers being a city on a hill, because this new location is literally sitting on a hill over looking the intersection.

I’m super hyped, but I’m also smart enough to know that the honeymoon won’t last. More accurately, I’ve hopefully learned by now through lots of times where I got excited only to see the enthusiasm fade and normalcy fade in.

I can remember all those Christmas gifts that I was thrilled to get. I remember how I felt, but looking back, I can’t remember the specific gifts any more. They lost their luster and faded from my memory. Some of them even ended up in garage sales a few years later.

That’s how it goes with anything I set my heart on this side of eternity. Anything less than God won’t fill that God-shaped yearning in me. Or as C. S. Lewis put it, anything that isn’t eternal is eternally out of date and obsolete.

I look forward to our move-in date in late May. I hope I will always be grateful for this gracious gift on God’s part. But I know that at some point, it will be just a building. More than likely, it will require maintenance and updating and repairs. And at some point, it will be no more.

But what it represents and what our church is all about (and every true Bible-believing church is all about) won’t ever fade or get stolen or moth-eaten or rust. The hope of God-with-us revealed in Jesus will only get better and more wonderful and more glorious over time, past time, and into eternity.

A Prayer for the Church

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I found this prayer for the Church that spoke to the state of the American Church and its great need for renewal and revival. In my opinion, so many of the churches in America have lost their way by either tying the gospel with politics and candidates or by becoming so much like culture that they no longer have a distinct message of hope that actually offers hope.

There’s a warning in the book of Revelation to the church at Ephesus that if they don’t repent, Jesus will come and remove their lampstand. That means that either they will cease to be an actual church or that they will continue with no authority or influence. I think some churches (and some denominations) in this country are already there. Many of them are what Jesus called the church at Laodicea in that they think they are alive but they are actually dead.

What we need isn’t the right candidate to win the election or for our side to be proven right and the other side shown to be wrong. What we need is to get back to the whole gospel that Jesus and the disciples proclaimed.

This is a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer written in 1662 that just as well could have been for 2024 (with little update on the old King James English):

“Most gracious God, we humbly beseech thee for thy holy catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all peace. Where it is corrupt, purge it; where it is in error, direct it; where anything is amiss, reform it; where it is right, strengthen and confirm it; where it is in want, furnish it; where it is divided and rent asunder, make up the breaches of it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Camping Out in the Gospels

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After several years of reading through the Bible in different translations, I decided to swerve off the well-trodden path and do something a little different. I’m reading through the Gospels in 2018.

I’m using the NIV Harmony of the Gospels, which instead of presenting each Gospel separately, puts parallel passages side by side and puts the story in narrative order. For example, the birth narrative starts with Luke’s introduction, John’s description of Jesus as the eternal Word of God, the genealogies of Jesus, the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and the conception of John the Baptist, and so forth.

I’m looking forward to rediscovering Jesus, free of all the political baggage that has been placed on Him from both the right and the left, conservatives and liberals alike. I have a feeling that Jesus said something at some point that both sides would deem offensive.

I want to fully embrace Jesus as both 100% man and 100% God (and not 50-50). I want to know Emmanuel, God with us. My plan is to read through the Gospels as many times as I can this year and let Scripture speak for itself.

If you’re interested in the book I’m using, you can pick up a copy here:

https://www.amazon.com/NIV-Harmony-Gospels-Robert-Thomas/dp/0060635231/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516593638&sr=8-1&keywords=the+niv+harmony+of+the+gospels

 

 

Peter, Peter, Peter II: The Sequel

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“The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say. So they ordered Peter and John out of the council chamber and conferred among themselves.

‘What should we do with these men?’ they asked each other. ‘We can’t deny that they have performed a miraculous sign, and everybody in Jerusalem knows about it. But to keep them from spreading their propaganda any further, we must warn them not to speak to anyone in Jesus’ name again.’ So they called the apostles back in and commanded them never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John replied, ‘Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard'” (Acts 4:13-20, NLT).

I wrote something a while back about how Peter always gets a bad rap for taking his eyes of Jesus while he’s walking on the water and sinking. People point out how Jesus had to rescue him and rebuke him for his lack of faith.

Yet Peter remains one of the only two people in history to ever walk on water, with the other being Jesus Himself. At least Peter got out of the boat. The other 11 stayed behind.

Peter had a long history of good intentions mixed with some bad execution. I personally can relate to that quite well. He’s the one who made the profession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, only to turn around and try to rebuke the Messiah later in the same conversation.

What I love about Peter is that he never quit. Even after so many embarrassing failures and foot-in-mouth incidents, he kept going. Eventually, he kept his zeal and enthusiasm, but added some wisdom to it.

That same apostle who denied Jesus three times is the same one who preached the Pentecost sermon that saw 3,000 saved. He’s the one who stated that he wouldn’t (and couldn’t) stop talking about how Jesus changed his life. They could beat him, stone him, jail him, and even kill him, but nothing would deter him from sharing the Gospel.

That same apostle ended up (according to tradition) being crucified upside down for his faith because he felt he was unworthy to be killed in the same manner as his Lord. He kept his word and was faithful even unto death.

What made the difference? What made people sit up and take notice when he opened his mouth to proclaim the gospel? It was the time spent with Jesus.

I’m thankful that God still uses people like Peter. God isn’t looking for the best-looking or the most gifted or the most gregarious. What he wants are people who are available and surrendered. He can use the least and the lowliest.

What He wants is you and me.

 

The Church as a Refuge

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I’ve been thinking lately about the whole refugee crisis. I’ve also been putting some thought into what my pastor said about the church being a refuge. Who better than to show hope to refugees than people whom the Bible calls aliens and strangers in this world who await a coming Kingdom?

The body of believers should be a place where people can go to escape from the fallout from the lies that society tells people about finding inner peace and fulfillment through outward change.

It should be where people go to find God and find the hope of salvation offered in the person of Jesus Christ, not more condemnation for lifestyle choices. It should be where spiritual transformation happens and not mere behavior modification.

I noticed today that when Jesus talked to the woman at the well, He didn’t force her to change her lifestyle before He offered the living water to her. He didn’t make her go end her relationship with the man she was living with who was not her husband.

He simply offered her a gift that would change her life forever if she took it. After all, it’s the Gospel that changes people. It’s what changes peoples’ hearts, which in turn leads to changed lives.

The Church has been guilty of putting up barriers between people and the Gospel almost from the very beginning. The people who need Jesus and the Gospel most are often the ones who feel the least welcome inside our doors.

The Gospel is for everyone. Thus, the Church is for everyone.

 

Grace Given Vs. Grace Received

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“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us” (Anne Lamott).

During the homeward commute, I thought I’d play the Good Samaritan and let the car beside me merge in front of me. Little did I know that the next three cars behind that car would take advantage of my generosity.

For a brief moment, I was upset. I was livid. I mean, how dare they? All of us good and faithful drivers have been patiently waiting in line while these others felt they could rush past us and force their way in at the last possible moment.

There’s no way they deserve to merge in front of me.

Then it was like God spoke to me. I don’t claim to hear the audible voice of God and I’m not claiming I had a prophetic word, but I had the strongest impression that God said, “You know that you’ve deserved far less and received far more than these people have.”

The heart of the Gospel is that Jesus came for the undeserving– the hell-deserving– and instead of giving them what they (and I ) deserved, He lavished them (and me) with exactly what they didn’t deserve but needed most. Grace. Mercy. Forgiveness.

That’s why I don’t buy into karma. I don’t go around bragging about other people getting what’s coming to them because I know where I’d be if I ever got what I truly had coming to me. It wouldn’t be pretty.

That’s why I’m such a huge fan of mercy and grace. I don’t get what I really deserve and I get what I don’t deserve.

I believe that if we’ve received so much grace, we should be the first to show it not to those who deserve it, but those like we once were (and still are at times) who deserve it least but need it most.

That means those with different political ideology than yours. It means people that irritate you and get on your nerves. It means bad drivers who don’t know how to merge.

Ultimately, it means forgiving yourself when you let yourself down, remembering that God has already forgiven you.

 

 

Still the Same

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“You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message” (Colossians 1:21-23, The Message).

It’s the same Gospel message that still saves anyone who comes to God in faith.

It’s the same Gospel message that saved a wretch like me.

It’s the same Gospel message that has the power to transform and liberate.

It’s still the same.

The Ultimate Fairy Tale

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“It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name….That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.” (Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale).

Perhaps that’s why so many of us are still drawn to fairy tales after all these years.

 

Some Positives for your Post-Election Weekend

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In case you missed it, there was an election this past Tuesday. A few people showed up. Some are elated at the result, while some are ready to jump off the nearest bridge or building they can find.

I thought I’d share a few positives on this Saturday evening because everyone probably needs a little more positivity in their lives at this point (regardless of whether your candidate won or not).

  1. Finding almost the entire series of one of your favorite sitcoms at Goodwill (in my case, it was the BBC sitcom As Time Goes By).
  2. A day with perfect fall weather.
  3. Hot chocolate on said day with perfect fall weather.
  4. Waking up in the morning.
  5. Not being dead.
  6. Pets that love you no matter what.
  7. Random acts of kindness all around us.
  8. The hope of the Gospel that still saves people like you and me.
  9. Time traveling back into the past via the Turner Classic Movie Channel and their old movies.
  10. A good mystery novel and a piping hot cup of tea.
  11. Just a piping hot cup of tea.
  12. Sleeping under the covers under a ceiling fan, even in the dead of winter.
  13. Those 50% off Criterion movie sales at Barnes and Noble.
  14. That feeling after you take your socks off.
  15. Sleeping in on Saturday mornings.
  16. Seeing your life as an adventure and living it that way.

Take as many of these as you like and leave the rest. Not everyone will agree with me on everything on the list (like those weird people who only like weather that is ridiculously hot and humid).

I’ve heard and found to be true that you pretty often find what you’re looking for, so if you only look for the negative and depressing, you’ll very often find it. The same goes for positive and uplifting. So maybe turn off the news and go outside for a change.

That’s all.