The Truth about Sin and the Redeemed

Evangelicals are fond of the ideology that everything is covered by the blood of Jesus.  There’s no sin that his sacrifice can’t atone for.  And this is a good thing, because it’s true.  We evangelicals know that the wages of sin is death; and the death of Jesus, offered once for all, is the payment accepted on our behalf.  The Scriptures abound with this truth.  What I don’t find is a sliding scale of which sin is worse than another.  I find no formula for:

Sin X requires 3 drops of the blood of the Lord, while Sin Y requires 2 whole pints. 

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.  But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation ~ Colossians 1:21-22 {emphasis mine}

I cannot find this prescription in Scripture because it is not there.  The truth is that each and every sin is first and foremost an act of rebellion against Almighty God; secondly, it is an act against His creation (self, other person, or nature) of which He has all proprietary rights.  I say this, because what follows is going to bother some people.  Some folks who have worked very hard to maintain as righteous a life as they could, sinning as absolutely little as possible; people who may truly be able to say, “follow me as I follow Christ.”*  But the truth is that no matter who you are, what you or have not done:

Each. Sin. Cost. Precisely. the Same. 

Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God.  Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.  You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. ~1 Corinthians 6:9-12 {emphasis mine}

 Each one cost the very life blood of God’s Only Son, Jesus Christ.  All of it.  Whether you’ve taken a stapler from work, or you’re the head of Enron.  Whether you’ve held anger in your heart towards your parents/spouse/child, or you’ve committed serial murder.  Whether you’ve only looked at the Sport’s Illustrated bikini models that one time, or your internet stable would be Solomon’s envy.  Whether you’ve stared at the ground trying to ignore the homeless person asking for help, or you’ve stocked piled humanitarian supplies to sell on the black market to the highest bidder.    

Any shade of sin cost Christ everything. 

And He paid it.  For Love.  For Hope.  For Healing.  For Restoration.   

If you have not accepted Christ’s sacrifice on your behalf, dearest one, I pray that you that do.  For there is nothing that you can do; no benevolence great enough to erase the sin-DNA coursing through all humanity, no deed good enough to tip the scales of righteousness in your favor.  There is only the blood of Jesus.

If you have accepted this gift, beloved, I am rejoicing for you.  For as one prone to fallenness, but for the grace of the Father, the love of the Son, and the presence of the Spirit, I am so delighted that you and I have been saved from ourselves and our sins. 

From here, followers, we must remember that every sin cost Christ the same.  So that we when look at others, we cannot call them by the label their sin mars them with.  For in Christ, there are no murders, no thieves, no fornicators, no liars, no abusers, no drunks. 

In Christ, there are only the redeemed saints. 

Saints who, while rejoicing in their new identities, must always recall from whence they came. 

Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.  You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world.  He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.  All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else. ~Ephesians 2:1-3 {emphasis mine}

An abortionist, forgiven by Christ, is the same as the little boy or girl who gave their lives to the Lord at 4, only  ever lying to his/her mom.  A terrorist, redeemed by Jesus, is the same as the missionary, bringing God’s Word and love to people the world over.  A pimp, a prostitute, or a john, saved by the Lord, is the same as Chuck Swindol, Beth Moore, or Billy Graham.

At the foot of the cross, we are all the same – sinners, in desperate need of our Savior.

This truth, dear friend, frees us to minister with Love.  Because we know, we are intimately familiar with, the sin ghetto in which all humanity struggles – until accepting Jesus’ rescue.  The truth of who we were, joined with the truth of who we are now lets us embody our new identity as made-righteous-in-Christ, so that we may shower His grace and love upon the lost and hurting in this dark world.  It allows us to use our hands, our words, and our hearts on behalf of God’s kingdom in the lives of the people He came to save.  The people who are the same as you and I were, not so very long ago.  The only thing that separates us now is our acceptance of the grace and love of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  May we bridge that gap with our outpouring of His love into the desperate and hopeless world, to which we have been called as ministers of Christ’s grace. 

~Amen

 

*{Before venturing further, I will say that I am so very thankful for people who live this way.  May you continue to be a beautiful light pointing to the Christlikeness towards which each of us should strive!}

 

 

Grace-full

Declaration 10: The new creation that I am is Grace-full, extending this beauty to those around me, both dear and unknown; and also to myself.  For Grace is the tangible realization of Love, the highest calling of the soul, the deepest yearning of creation.  It holds the entirety of the gospel, the glory of the history of the universe, the overwhelming power of God, and the depth of His Love; all caged in five little letters: ca.ris

Read: Ephesians 2:6-10

          It is by Grace…

Four words that give the sum of this mortal coil: it is by Grace.  What exists or occurs, what good, what beauty, what joy, what love happens apart from grace?  A mere cluster of words that encompass the entire gospel, the purpose of the passion, the victory of the resurrection, the parent-heart of God.  Grace.

 But grace didn’t come into existence on the cross, for Christ breathed grace into a world crazy-desperate for it.  Neither was its inception at the incarnation, the humble and eternity-altering entrance of Immanuel into willful humanity.  No, Grace pre-existed those for whom it was intended.  For if God is omniscient then He had to know that creating beings with an individual will meant that they could intentionally choose wrong.  What then, when these beings have turned their backs on the Creator that designed them?  The answer: Love, housed in Grace, as Divinity was housed in flesh.  Grace is the palpable expression of this Love; something to which I, and you, beloved, can point as my experience of God’s unfathomable, incomprehensible, unchangeable Love.     

Thus, if I am changed by this Grace [and how could I not be if I have actually experienced it, this trading of my wrongs for the innocence of God’s only Son?] I will exude it.  It will literally ooze out of my pores, embody my breath.  For if Heaven can’t contain it, how can I?  Yet this can only happen if I am daily found at the fount of Grace, that it might pour, like a rushing river, over my rough edges into a world of people just like me---who are in desperate need of it. 

First, I must know my place: I am a redeemed daughter of the King of Kings, adopted into His family, rejoiced over, delighted in, and loved beyond all understanding.  Regardless of how I am performing or behaving  at the time.  Also, I must know who I am: a sinner, a fallen and defeated warrior who has a bent toward darkness, selfishness, and pride; but for Christ.  Therefore, I can empathized with other lost and wandering sinners: those who have never found the light; and those like me, who have been found and should consequently know better, but who like Paul, can’t seem to help themselves.  And at the same time, the exact same time, I am the woman whom God took great joy in creating, for this time and this place and this life.  A woman who is called by His purposed to be whom He created her to; a woman who, through the sacrifice of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, can be.

Second, I must feast on God’s Love that I might be full of His Grace.  For me, this looks like spending time in His Word, every day.  And talking with Him all the time.  And asking the Holy Spirit to pinch me when I’m stepping out of line, and poke me when I should be offering what I’ve been freely given.  I even have to ask for help obeying.  And I must bend my will to His, turn my life over to this molten love that it will melt away what is undesirable and purify what is good.  Even this will not happen absent of the Spirit’s work in me, for I am too prone to return to debauchery and rebellion and the altar of me.       

Finally, I must see all these weary souls around me as God does: precious, beloved, lost vagrants scraping out a hollow life in a destitute land.  This includes my children, who, as their mother does, willfully flout parental laws.  This includes the Officer, who, as his wife does, fails to live up to the perfection of Love.  This includes my friends and family, who like their sister/daughter/niece/comrade, disappoint in flawless relationships.  And it includes people who are vapors in my life, the ones I see and don’t because my flurried and selfish eyes don’t have time to register them. 

Grace requires the knowledge that I am flawed and broken, and so is everyone else.  It demands that I live out of this truth with every person with whom I interact.  That this way of loving others become the rhythm of my days.  And in my daily stumbling I should be able recall the need to be Grace-full to each person, even myself.  For if God can love them and me when we are weak and full of failures, how can I not do the same? 

 

     

    

 

Identified by Grace

A Precursor to Declaration 10.

[Spoiler alerts/trigger warnings:  my full testimony, which is in the works, involves abortion.  Read with appropriate care.]

 

For me, grace lives in a certain living room and on a particular mountain top.  I have seen its lithe and willowy arms softly curl about shoulders hung low with grief and bondage and failure; watched as it drew ethereal thumb across wounded visage, wiping away the tears of too much hurt and too much darkness.  And I have seen grace weep, too.  I have fought for this grace on behalf of so many beautiful prisoners; been injured and exhausted, with dented shield and bloodied sword, that they might have the victory given me.  I have heard the thunderous roar of armies of angels give standing ovation when this grace is believed and accepted.  And I have been afforded the honor of witnessing countenances grow luminous as the breath of freedom finally pierces their lungs. I have had the distinct privilege to watch these once shackled souls take their place in the kingdom; not as wretches scurrying about furtively as though they don’t belong, but as beloved and doted upon children of the King, who have a purpose as His emissaries, His image, His very presence to a broken and mutilated world. 

I can tell you, without hesitation or doubt, that Grace is the most beautiful thing in all the world.  It is the very bent of Faith, the climax of Hope, the truest expression of Love.  

It is to this living room, and this mountain, that my thoughts always turn when I look hard after Grace.  [Followed closely with a certain pew in a Baptist church tucked in to ice and berms on the last frontier, where I finally trusted just enough to have the entirety of my sins removed from my shoulders; a burden physically lifted from me.]  I think of these places because that is where Grace was most evident, most palpable, most visible. 

But Grace is all around.  All the time.

Before I can really address Grace, I have to know who I am in Christ.  Because for a very, very long time I held onto an identity that was not true to the Grace which had come at such a high cost.  One that told me that I had to be good enough to deserve God’s love, because of my past; for I was without doubt far worse than any other sinner planted on the pews around me.  And then, even after God used His word and His ministers to remove that lie from my life, I found myself floundering in another.  The lie that Grace saw me through a lens of redemption, a filter dependent on my past that it might define my present and future.  I was Jenni, the post-abortive woman whom Jesus saved.  And while this title is true, I am post-abortive and Jesus did forgive, save, redeem, and restore me.  Neither He, nor God the Father, nor the Holy Spirit have ever called me Jenni-the-post-abortive-woman-who-has-now-been-redeemed-and-set-free.  Not before my abortion, not during, not after when I walked ceaselessly into the darkness that followed, and not even after I allowed His Grace to wash over this pain and to ultimately remove it and make me clean and whole once again. 

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have always called me:

          Jenni, My beloved.

Once I traded my sin for Christ's righteouness, there has been no sin attached to my name in the eyes of Jesus.  Though there has been in the eyes of His followers.  And for a time, I allowed myself to be defined by it.  I wore my scarlet A for the glory of His kingdom: surely, my purpose was to show others that even someone like me could be saved.  And I believed that the only calling someone like me could have would be as a post-abortive women who ministers to other post-abortive women.  Because that was who I am. 

And yet, in the scriptures we see that God sent the most zealous of the Jews to bring the truth of Jesus to the Gentiles.  We find that a five-times scorned foreign woman was the first missionary of the gospel.  A prince of Egypt delivered the Hebrews, a woman Judge lead Israel against their foes, an unwed teenager gave birth to the Messiah, and the man who denied Christ three times led the church in Rome.  God doesn’t appear to be in the habit of pigeon-holing people into the roles for which they are most logically suited.

So must it be with me.  And with you, dear one.  Because the only identity I want to claim is the one by which Grace has always known me: Jenni, beloved.  Yes, God can, has, and I have to assume will use my testimony of His Grace to build His kingdom.  But I also trust that He will do it as it suits Him; not as it suits me or anyone else around me.  If I am to minister to women or girls or couples who have experienced abortions, then it will be by His summoning and authority alone; not by the suggestion of humanity.  Or if I am to share this story of beautiful and wild grace with those who have no knowledge or experience with abortion, then it will be by God’s calling and power, for I will be quite out of my league. 

Yet, I know that the call of Grace is meant for every heart.  And it is winsome and overwhelming.  And it is the most beautiful thing in all the world.       

Jason Gray: "Remind Me Who I Am"

             

If you have experienced an abortion in your past, please know that there is hope and healing through the grace of the cross, beloved.  Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient; and His love is greater than our darkest moments and His mercy pierces our longest night.  If you have questions, concerns, or just to need to talk, I am always available.  Visit my ministry website at http://aletheiaministries.webs.com/ and click on the “Contact” button at the top of the page.  This will send a confidential e-mail to my private, personal account.  And I will respond in the same manner: confidentially and privately.  But know that no matter what your past, present, or future struggle, you are greatly delighted in.  And you are loved more than the weight of the universe.  And there is always hope for those who look to Jesus.        

Through a glass clearly

Declaration 7 [part II]:  The new creation that I am will inhabit her identity.  She will not long for the adventure or husks of others.  She will give others the freedom to do the same: to be whom they were created to be. 

For the Designer is the Greatest Poet, and we are His poetry.

Tuesday was fairly straightforward, and if you’ve read much of this blog, you’re aware that it’s a personal refrain of mine:

Be the you God created you to be. 

So why a part II for this declaration?  Because after years of toiling under the impression that I have to fit into a particular mold, acting in a certain way, in order to be a good Christian woman and now slowly learning that this is not, in fact, what scripture is teaching us, I have found that there is another perilous side to being who you are meant to be.  It is the dangerous place of striving to be who you’re told you’re going to be.  While we must not only beware of trying too hard to be like other people [or like a list of traits], we must also be wary of being who others want us to be.   

Mentors are wonderful gifts.  They can identify and call out in us traits of which we were unaware.  They can challenge us, encourage us, champion our growth, and even rebuke us when we’ve strayed too far from where we should be going.  They can help us find the path on which we will blossom and bring the greatest glory to the Lord.  And they can help us along this path, employing their wisdom and love to our greatest benefit. 

However, because all mentors, even the paper ones, are human, they are fallible.  Thus, sometimes they can be wrong; and they can lead us astray.  Not with malicious purpose, and not necessarily outside the bounds of God’s plan for us.  But blindly following their lead, believing solely what they’ve spoken into our lives, about who we are, can, in some instances, be detrimental to becoming and being the person who God designed us to be.  For as fallible humans, they can only see God's design through a glass darkly, and cannot fully know the plans of God.

   

Consider for a moment three men in Acts: Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark.  Barnabas was one of the first Christians in Jerusalem to accept Paul [the formerly murderous Saul], to care for him, to minister to him, to minister with him.  Barnabas and Paul were missionaries together, helming the inclusive movement to incorporate the Gentiles into the Way.[1]  What we find in the pages of Acts is a beautiful friendship and partnership.  These two men toiled long and mightily together, on behalf of the gospel and a people whom most Hebrews thought were never worthy of grace.  We can glean so much from their relationship, even 2,000 years later.  Yet there came a time when these two “had such a sharp disagreement that they parted ways” [Acts 15:39].  And this disagreement was over one man’s desertion of their work.  Eventually, Paul continued his ministry without Barnabas; and Barnabas took John Mark alongside him to do the same. 

Paul, author of almost half of the New Testament; Paul, to whom Christ appeared post-resurrection and to whom God gave an experiential vision of Heaven.  This very Paul found John Mark unfit for service; untrustworthy in matters of the gospel.  And he felt so strongly about John Mark, that he parted company with a man who had no doubt been a great comfort to him and a dear friend.  I won’t waste time projecting what each man might have felt; but I believe that it is likely in each of our lives we have experienced something similar.  Perhaps you were the one who was absolutely certain that a particular individual was utterly unfit for promoting the gospel, based on their past behavior.  Maybe you were Barnabas, the advocate on behalf of a sinner, who had to stand up against unyielding leadership and lost friends and co-laborers in the process.  Or maybe you were the John Mark, someone who made mistakes in your service or your past, that others felt disqualified you from preaching the gospel.  And despite your great desire [and dare I say calling] to do it again, those in positions of leadership told you: NO.

But what we find later in scripture is that Barnabas continued to preach the gospel and that Paul uses his service as an example to other believers [1Corinthians 9:6].  John Mark worked alongside Barnabas and eventually became associated with Peter [1 Peter 5:13].  He was included in Paul’s first imprisonment and “by the end of Paul’s life, he came to admire [John] Mark so much that he requested him to come to be with him during his final days” [2 Timothy 4:11].[2]  Thus, we must conclude that all three men were destined to preach the gospel, to glorify the Lord, to be used by God for His holy and divine purpose. 

We cannot, nor should we, speculate about whether these three should have remained together; nor can we truly posit that it was more beneficial that they parted ways and thus reached more people separately than they might have together.  For who among us can claim to know the mind of God?  What we can say is that God is a God of relationship, not separation; and His purposes will be achieved regardless of human failings.        

Listen, dear one, to what the Holy Spirit is telling you about who you are and what you were made to do.  Yes, seek counsel about this.  Yes, test everything you hear against the scriptures.  Yes, search out a mentor who is willing and able to pour into you their experience and love and who will call out in you traits you didn’t know you possessed and who will encourage you to be exactly who you were made to be.  But don’t ever allow anyone’s opinions or judgments or declarations of “I heard from God” steal from you your purpose or your identity.  Neither should you permit anyone to tell you what you were meant to do, what ministry you are destined for, what call has been placed upon your life. 

Only God, and His Holy Spirit, has that authority.      

 

 

---

[1] The partnership of Paul and Barnabas can be found in Acts 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.

 [2] Zondervan 1984 NIV Study Bible: notes on Acts 15:39

Snowflakes and Poems: Who We Are

Declaration 7 [part I]:  The new creation that I am will inhabit her identity.  She will not long for the adventure or husks of others.  She will give others the freedom to do the same: to be whom they were created to be. 

For the Designer is the Greatest Poet, and we are His poetry.

For a very long time, I thought [and was taught] that there is only one way to be a good Christian woman.  I have seen numerous leaders, both national and within the context of my local worship, strive to put forth this ideal.  I have read countless authors, of books and blogs, who aim to provide practical ways to fit our sloppy selves into this mold.   Why?  Because we have this model seemingly preserved for us in Scripture.  She allegedly lurks at the end of Proverbs…or at least, that’s what we’ve been told.  But I am learning that this cookie-cutter image of Christian woman perfection isn’t what we’ve made it.  Lady Wisdom [Sophia, aka: Proverbs 31 woman] is not the sole standard for good Christian girls, nor one for which we should blindly strive.  Instead, she is an inclusion of the feminine in a time when women in cultures outside the nation of Israel were chattel.  God put females in His Word, and thus made their value, their worth to Him, important.  Worth writing down, and preserving for all generations.  So that they might not be ignored or demeaned or seen as less.  Thus, we should not assign to Lady Wisdom a role for which she was not intended: the only way to be an ideal-Christian-woman.    

I’ll confess: I am not a Women’s Ministry kind of gal, for a variety of reasons.  But it was only within the past two years, that I figured out (after two dear and wise mentors told me thus) this is okay.  I hate shopping.  Bores me to tears; except for once or twice a year when the mood strikes.  I’ll take a pedicure, but more often than not my toes are an embarrassment to ideal femininity.  I’d rather hike, snowshoe, ski, camp, dive under the water and get my hair wet than stay prettily coiffed and made-up.  I could spend all day trolling youtube for poets, listening to their lyricism not with my ears, but with the cavity their words carve into my chest.  But I could skip math altogether.  I love to read, would give up days upon days to linger in books; I love the cinema so much that I strove for a year to learn its craft and make it my own.  I write; but you already knew that.  And yes, I'm more than just a little bit of a nerd [to whit, I will now impress you with photos of my homemade Christmas decoration from last year].  

 Get the template here

I could go on and on about who I am; but that is not the purpose.  I don’t need to explore what makes me, me.  I need to be me.  I need to live out loud the poem that God created me to be—not a rerun of one He has already penned.        

God, the Creator of all things, isn’t a one-hit-wonder.  We each are different.  Oh thank God that we are!  And we were created to be thus.  God isn’t a maker of replicates.  He has not been interested in repeating the same creation over and over again since He spoke the myriad of galaxies into existence.  He designs purposefully, with precise intent.  He put you and I right here, for right now.  Not so that we may replay Christian victories of the past, or mimic ages long since gone.  But so that we may be us, in this time, to the glory and delight of our King.    

 And this one here

Consider snowflakes.  Out of the billions that fall from the sky each year, not one—not a solitary one—is identical to another.  If God can take such care in creating a tiny ice sculpture that will melt with the heat of the sun, how much more does He delight in making every person unique from any other?   Each one of us, since time began, is one of His poems.  And as such, not a single one of us is exactly like another.  As the poetry metaphor goes, there are those who are Emerson-esque, or Barrett-Browning, or Coelho, or Bennett, or Shakespeare, or even Cummings.  Some are wild and full of thunderous energy.  Others flow with melody and tenderness.  Still others stumble over the necessity to be known and understood.  And others, stoic and still, can only be appreciated when patiently mined for meaning deep within, by unrelenting love.          

 Finally, this one here

Rejoice in the fact that you are you, and no one else.  That you have your life, not that of another.  In this time, in no other period but this.  You are not called to be anyone other than who you are.  Yes, we are each called into greater Christ-likeness; but that is a Christ-likeness that can only be reflected in you.  You, without whom the world and time would be incomplete.  You, whom God delighted in planning before even the foundations of the world was formed.  You, whom God knows so well that He numbers the hairs on your head and knows what words will spill off your tongue before you speak them.  You, not any other person, alive or dead.  You.    

Though this post appears, at surface, to be aimed only at women, it also has application for Christian men.  We mustn’t assume that there aren’t ideals for men to strive to attain.  What about the chest-thumping leader who is gentle enough to weep at the sight of a newborn while courageous enough to run head-long into fire or war to save those under his care; a man who rises every morning with certainty of what he was called to do, and who tireless provides for his family, even to the detriment of his own well-being.  A man who devoutly captains family devotions as master theologian and prays over his family, out loud and daily, with the finesse of an evangelist.  Lion-slayer, foot-washer, witty apologist, and gentle psalmist, who flays his shield at the onset of danger and every moment of every day delights in the bride of his youth as flowery words pour from his lips lauding her place in his life.  Certainly even this hyperbolic ideal, a case for which could be made using scripture, is not what all men everywhere were designed to be.  And it is a mold into which mortal men will not fit.    

Within the twelve who walked with Jesus, and the women we find attending Him, we are privy to glimpses of separate personalities.  Jesus didn’t laude one over another.  So why do we?

Again, I urge you, be the you God created you to be.  For the glory of His Kingdom, and the delight of His heart.    

*For a practical exercise, check out the fourth paragraph of this article.

Manifesto

About a month ago, give or take a few weeks, I sat in the smack middle of a river of unknown-ness.  I was being washed over and felt myself drowning in the uncertainty and helplessness of it all.  The entire situation so far outside of my influence I could literally do nothing but pray.  Long.  And hard.  With urgency and fervor and reverence that has been so lacking of late in my audience with the Almighty.  Not that intimacy nor familiarity are bad in and of themselves; quite the opposite, in fact.  Jesus calls his followers friends and God’s desire is a deep, intimate relationship with each one of us.  However, my summer has been the fisheye lens of Job-esque reverence.  The absolute need to recognize exactly who is sovereign over my circumstance.

It was then that the kids had gone over the mountains and through the woods; the Officer was in the forest, unreachable and distant.  And I was quite alone, with the exception of my blind lab-velcro-ador.  And God.  Through this repast, I came to a place of genuine listening; not my typical, I’m going to toss up what I need for the day and hope the answer either falls into my coffee cup or literally opens my bible and yells directly at me mode of “hearing from God.”  I really listened; because, quite frankly, it was all I could do.  The house was hauntingly quiet; and I was suffocating under a veil of forced silence.

I had a Jerry Maguire moment; the this-isn’t-a-memo-it’s-a-mission-statement kind.  In the pressing quiet, I penned a personal manifesto.  A new mode of being who I am, with a right focus, and intentional purpose.  A way of living that would be completely different from the way I was surviving.  I typed it out.  I artfully placed it in my journal.  I read it every day the kids and Officer where gone.  And upon their return, I promptly fell back into routine.  Not all the way back, mind you; but far enough that I’d forgotten most of what I’d written.  I had the principles, the ghosts of the ideas, floating about.  But with the distractions that come with family and decisions and these situations overtaking my days, I lost what I had so vehemently purposed just a few weeks prior.

But God’s timing is always perfect.  I was thumbing back through my journal today; and there it was, as artfully displayed as ever.  And the words shone with new intensity, particularly in light of this week.  You see, dear reader, while you are reading this installment on Thursday, I am writing it on Monday (no, not future Monday… Monday past).  I know this week will require more prayer than before; more energy, more attention.  Thus I’m writing to you in anticipation of what’s coming.   [And if you know me, then you know how out of character planning is.]  I will be taking these next five weeks (the Tuesdays and Thursdays thereof) to share with you my manifesto for my new life.   My outline for a life in Christ that is honoring to God, compassionate towards others, grounded in Scripture, girded with prayer, and centered on Jesus Christ.

Join me, won’t you?  My prayer is that you might also be blessed with a renewal of spirit, find ways to apply my lessons to your life in Christ.  Perhaps even discover that you’re not as alone in your struggles as you think.  And pen your own manifesto in the process. 

For now, dear one, I will share with you the first line of my manifesto, that you might know my heart:

I am a new creation in Christ. 

The old has died and the new has come. 

I commit to walking obediently and faithfully

in my new identity

as Beloved,

as Chosen,

as Daughter.

 

           

The gods of our own making

Dogma, origin

What happens when we stay tucked into our familiar comfort-zones, the places and people that look and sound and feel most like us? 

For one, we can stop growing; if we’re not being pushed outside what’s comfortable, we have a tendency towards stagnation.  We can also stop seeing the forest and only see the leafless and wilting branches, nit-picking the theology and practices of those whom we claim as spiritual family.  Or like an inverted nautilus, we can wind more tightly into our own ideas so that our theology begins to more closely resemble the body which developed it than God himself.  This final tendency being perhaps the most dangerous of all.

There is, within contemporary Western Christianity a fascination with Love. With Jesus as not so much as prophet or good-guy-who-had-some-radical-ideas, rather, with Jesus as the ultimate embodiment of Love.  And only Love.  As if the totality of the Divinity of Christ could be so succinctly summed up: Love, and nothing more. 

Yes, God is Love.[1]  Yes, Christ did die for Love.[2]  And, yes, it is by our Love that followers of Jesus will be known. 

Yet we mustn’t forget from whence that very Love comes.  This Love can only come from God: the God of the New and Old Testaments.  The God of Christians and the Israelites.  The God of Love and the God of the Law.  Glennon Melton’s assertion, in her most recent post at Momastery, that Love trumps the Law, due to Jesus’ seeming flouting thereof as “Sinny McSinnerton”[3], is a back-handed rejection of the God from whither the Law first came.  It is the repudiation of Christ’s assertion that He came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.  It is the narrow-minded, Western, one-quarter-world view that all we need is Love. 

What about Justice?  What about Righteousness?  What about Holiness?

Where do those fit in with the nothing-but-Love paradigm that is so flagrant and prolific and, frankly, seductive in our seeker-driven worship?  Because if Jesus (and thus by extension, God Himself) is only Love, then my sins are of no consequence.  My lifestyle, my choices, my actions are meaningless; because by golly, Jesus loves me.  And so long as I in turn love everybody else, all will be right with the world. 

But if my sins (and by extension, the sins of everyone else) are of no consequence, then why did Jesus have to die?  Why kill Love?

I maintain that Jesus had to die, because my sins (and yours and those of every other person ever to live) do matter.  Because my actions, my lifestyle, my human-ness and my very propensity towards sin twists and perverts everything about me and God’s creation, Jesus had to die to fix it.  To redeem it, to yank creation and me back from evil, and say, “Oh, no you don’t; this is mine!” 

Therefore, Christ wasn’t just a guy who loved people radically.  Yes, He did that.  But he was also the foretold Messiah, the Savior of the world.  He wasn’t merely a revolutionary who was also an outcast who loved other outcasts really well.  Yeah, he did that, too.  But the Divine-Incarnate Jesus, as Mrs. Melton posits in her article, could not have come today, or ever, as a black, lesbian teenager.  I do not say this because I agree with John Piper’s teaching that God is inherently masculine, and NOT because I believe Jesus hates anyone because their sexual orientation (I very, very firmly believe that God so loved the entire world—every person of every race and gender and age and worldview—that he gave his only Son not to condemn the world, but to save it; so that all who believe in Christ will not perish but have eternal life); but I say this because Jesus had to be who he was in order to fulfill the prophecies proclaimed about him in the centuries preceding his incarnation.  Jesus was exactly who he was supposed to be.  And he walked the earth at exactly the time he was supposed to walk it.

When we forgot or purposely neglect this, we have in essence forgotten the God who sent his Son to die in our place.  We make the Son greater than the Father.  We bend the Divine human to fit our worldly human desires.  We create a god who looks more like we want him to look than he actually does.

Had Jesus been anything else other than a 1^st century Palestinian Jew, his very existence would have made God a liar. 

And you can call me a stuffy, old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy [or you can pick from other, more colorful pejoratives should you chose; trust me, I’ve both heard and used them before,] Christian.  But I have a knee-jerk reaction when anything we posit about God could be construed in such a way as to make him a liar.  Because doing so makes him not God.  And if he’s not God, then from whom was Jesus sent, and whose kingdom are we proclaiming?  A god of our own making?  

Or the Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, of all that seen and unseen, whose thoughts are not human thoughts, and whose ways are not humanity’s ways? 

Then ask yourself: Upon which would you stake eternity?   

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

A. W. Tozer

 

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[1] 1 John 4:8

[2] John 3:14-18

[3] Glennon Melton, “I Think Jesus’d be gay…Or No She Didn’t,” Momastery, http://momastery.com/blog/2012/05/28/i-think-jesusd-be-gay-orno-she-didnt/