Dear
reader:
I wanted
to
explore
some things a little further. There were some concepts brought out in
the
article that may be a little confusing to some readers. Why not? I was
confused
about these things for years! I can’t expect everyone to see
immediately what
it took me a long time to come to realize.
One
important
concern
can be summarized in this way: Someone will ask me, “Do I have to keep
the Ten
Commandments in order to be saved?” The way the question is asked makes
it
sound as if obeying the commandments will earn us our salvation, while
disobeying them will guarantee our being sent into the flames. As such,
this
question sounds like it comes from what I can only think of as
legalism, meaning
that you have to obey as a condition of being saved, or as a
prerequisite to
being saved.
The way
to
avoid this
trap is to realize what I said in the article: If the question is being
asked,
the one asking the question doesn’t yet have the concept. The grand
concept of
salvation is reduced to “What do I have to do?”
In fact,
there is a
story recorded in the gospels about a fellow who came to Messiah and
asked him
what he had to do (or, more specifically, what good thing did he have
to do, which
showed his reliance on doing good deeds as a means to be saved).
Messiah told
the man, “You know the commandments.” The man said he had been doing
them.
Messiah then offered a suggestion about one thing the man could do. It
would
even make the man perfect! But he was unwilling to do it. So he left
sorrowing,
because this thing he would have to do hit him where it hurt, and he
wasn’t
willing to go that far. Messiah then went on to teach that it would be
difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom.
The
problem
is that,
right or wrong, the rich man understood the way to salvation to be a
matter of doing
something. That’s why he wanted to know what he could do. (A lot of us are like
that, aren’t we?) Yet Messiah taught that the secret of success was not
so much
a matter of "What shall I do?” as much as it is a matter
of “What
shall I be?”, or “What shall I become?”
Remember
that the righteousness from God cleanses us from the inside out. It’s
the
righteousness of man that concerns itself merely with
how many
sins I have committed today, or did I make it through the day without
sinning.
Of
course, at
a certain
stage of development, it’s appropriate to learn what to do and what not
to do.
At the beginning level, we need to be told what falls within the bounds
of
things we can do and what falls outside those boundaries. Over time, we
should
be developing the ability to make that decision on our own, with the
help of
God’s spirit in us. As we grow in understanding, we can understand why
a particular action is acceptable or not.
As an
example, when we
have little children, and they are just beginning to walk, they work
really
hard at developing the muscles and the skills necessary to get around.
But we
have to teach them, help them, guide them, warn them, and generally
look after
them and try to keep them from breaking things or hurting themselves.
What’s
the
typical
example? Touching a hot stove. I’m going to go back and forth using the
example
of hot stoves as a metaphor for our own approach to salvation and our
relationship to God.
We have to
teach our little children not to touch the hot stove. There’s a reason:
They
could get burned. It seems simple and basic to us, but not to a little
baby
trying hard to become a toddler. So they have to find out for
themselves,
through their own experience, that they really do want to avoid running
into a
hot stove. Over time, they come to know automatically to avoid hot
stoves, and
we don’t have to be there to tell them.
Now, do
children have
to avoid touching hot stoves in order to grow up and become adults?
Does the
avoidance of hot stoves allow them to grow up? If they continue to
touch hot
stoves, will that keep them at their current age? Kind of silly to ask
such
questions, isn’t it? The two really have little to do with each other.
But it’s
important that
we all learn not to touch hot stoves! We can get hurt! And the more we
touch
hot stoves, the more we get hurt. And yes, it can lead to a premature
death, as
well as to untold suffering and scarring for life. So there is a
relationship
between the two thoughts. But it’s not a causative relationship. That
is, it
really is good not to burn yourself, and you could die from doing
dangerous
things. But that’s not the thing that determines whether you grow to
adulthood
or not.
Do we
need to
obey the
Ten Commandments in order to be saved?
Our
little
children are
supposed to learn age-appropriate lessons so we can trust them to be in
a
kitchen, or near a wood stove, and not have to constantly worry about
what
they’re going to do. Avoiding hot stoves is the thing we want them to
do.
But now,
what
do we
want them to be? That’s the important clue in this
discussion. We
want them to be careful children who go through life being aware of
dangers and
living a life that includes safety precautions. That’s what we want
them to be.
That’s why we say, “Be careful!” It’s what we want them to be.
Does the
absence of
touching hot stoves earn them the right to grow up?
By the
time
the
children are a little older, they should have mastered the art of not
touching
hot stoves. But life gives us many opportunities to do stupid things.
So we
have to continue teaching our children, at an age-appropriate level, of
the
dangers there are in life. We will have to discuss drugs and sex with
our
children. We will have to tell them that there are dangers involved
with the
misuse of these things. We may have to begin with a series of do’s and
don’ts
regarding these dangers. We might have to hover over them rather
closely at
first to make sure things are going the right way. What is our goal? To
produce
children who have the ability to think correctly, make good decisions,
avoid
bad situations and people, and successfully navigate the dangerous
waters of
adolescence. We want them to be something (good, moral
people),
not simply to do something (avoid drug addiction,
promiscuity,
and disease).
Actually,
what our
children do comes from what they are. Their behavior stems from the
kind of person they are. If we manage to raise them to be good people,
they
should make wise choices in life. (You might already be thinking of Proverbs 22:6: “Train
a child in the way he should go, and when he
is old he will not turn from it.”)
So it is
with
us in our
Christian lives. When we first learn about God, and about His
tremendous love
for each of us, and His awesome gift of eternal life through Messiah,
and the
opportunity to live with Him forever and explore the universe out into
infinity
as His children, we want to investigate that possibility some more. And
we find
that there are certain expectations placed on us as God’s adopted
children now,
so that we can become His fully born children later, at the Second
Coming.
One of
the
things we
learn is that God expects us to obey Him. As I pointed out in the
article, it’s
pretty plain that God’s standards of living are outlined in the Bible.
And
quite often, they are presented as a list of do’s and don’ts. In Bible
talk, or
church-speak, these little road markers are called sin. These are the
do’s and
the don’ts. If you don’t do the do’s, that’s a sin. If you do the
don’ts,
that’s a sin. Yes, it gets confusing at times. But once we learn the
basics,
they guide us in our lives. God’s laws are a lamp to our feet! (This
would be a
good time to get a modern translation of the Bible and read through
Psalm 119.)
So, as
beginners,
taking our baby steps in the faith, we need to know what we can and
can’t do as
Christians. We often find ourselves asking someone, perhaps a member of
the
clergy, perhaps a trusted friend, if such-and-such behavior is
appropriate for
a Christian. By steering these course corrections, we are able to make
forward
progress in our lives.
But as we
grow, we
shouldn’t have to be told again to watch out for hot stoves. We should
have
mastered the baby steps and grown to a point where we can handle
progressively
greater challenges as God puts us through various educational
experiences in
life. Our Christian lives shouldn’t be ruled so much by what we should do,
but rather we should look to what we should be.
What
about
the rich man
in the gospels? What did he want to know? “What good thing must I do?”
He was
told some things to do. He said he was already doing them. Messiah gave
him a
suggestion for something he could do: give away his money, lose his
position
and standing, and come be a disciple of the Master. The man was not
able to do
this one thing that kept him from success. Why? It wasn’t so much
because of
what he would have to do as much as it was because of
what he
needed to become!
He had
money.
Lots of
money. Giving it all away would be a difficult thing. He would have to
become
something he didn’t want to become. What would he have to become?
Generous!
Serving! Other-oriented instead of self-oriented. And, of course,
broke!
Messiah
also
gave him a
second thing to do: become a disciple. Leave the luxurious life of that
town,
the prestige, the comforts, the privileges, and become an itinerant
student of
this traveling rabbi who didn’t have the finest upbringing, the finest
schooling, the finest clothing. What would the rich man have to become?
Poor!
Humble! Teachable! More concerned with the things of God than with his
own
appearance or comfort.
Messiah
was
calling for
this man to make a complete change in his life. What was Messiah
offering in
return? “‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus said to them, ‘no one who has
left home
or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom
of God
will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to
come,
eternal life’” (Luke 18:29-30).
Messiah
wasn’t asking
the man to simply do something to earn his way into the reign of God.
He was
asking the man to change. He gave the man an opportunity to become
something he
would never be able to become on his own, with Messiah himself there to
help
this man every step of the way.
Another
gospel writer
added more detail to this account: “Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the
truth,
at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious
throne,
you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the
twelve
tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or
sisters or
father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a
hundred times
as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be
last, and
many who are last will be first” (Matthew 19:28-30).
Do you
begin
to
comprehend what the rich man left behind? Why in the world did he do
it? To
hang on to his riches? Pray that we don’t ever think this way!
Earlier,
Messiah had
been teaching in parables, and one of his stories fits in quite nicely
here.
“He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard
seed,
which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of
all
your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and
becomes a
tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches’”
(Matthew
13:31-32).
Our
children
start
small, but they grow. The reign of the heavens starts small, even in
our own
lives. Then it grows, as it does in our lives. But even though the tiny
mustard
seed grows into a large plant, in this parable Messiah says that the
plant must become something else before it can
finally
succeed
and
live up to its full potential. It grows up as a plant, but at some
point, in
this illustration, it becomes a tree. Can a plant become a tree?
Ordinarily
not. There are limits within the DNA of living creatures. We’re looking
at a
miracle taking place.
Paul
explains
it this
way, in 1 Corinthians 15:35-57 (Contemporary English Version):
35 Some
of you have asked, “How will the dead be raised to life? What kind of
bodies
will they have?”
36 Don’t be foolish. A seed
must die
before it can sprout from the ground.
37 Wheat seeds and all other
seeds look
different from the sprouts that come up.
38 This is because God gives
everything
the kind of body he wants it to have.
39 People, animals, birds,
and fish are
each made of flesh, but none of them are alike.
40 Everything in the heavens
has a
body, and so does everything on earth. But each one is very different
from all
the others.
41 The sun isn’t like the
moon, the
moon isn’t like the stars, and each star is different.
42 That’s how it will be
when our
bodies are raised to life. These bodies will die, but the bodies that
are
raised will live forever.
43 These ugly and weak
bodies will
become beautiful and strong.
44 As surely as there are
physical
bodies, there are spiritual bodies. And our physical bodies will be
changed
into spiritual bodies.
45 The first man was named
Adam, and
the Scriptures tell us that he was a living person. But Jesus, who may
be
called the last Adam, is a life-giving spirit.
46 We see that the one with
a spiritual
body did not come first. He came after the one who had a physical body.
47 The first man was made
from the dust
of the earth, but the second man came from heaven.
48 Everyone on earth has a
body like
the body of the one who was made from the dust of the earth. And
everyone in
heaven has a body like the body of the one who came from heaven.
49 Just as we are like the
one who was
made out of earth, we will be like the one who came from heaven.
50 My friends, I want you to
know that
our bodies of flesh and blood will decay. This means that they cannot
share in
God’s kingdom, which lasts forever.
51 I will explain a mystery
to you. Not
every one of us will die, but we will all be changed.
52 It will happen suddenly,
quicker
than the blink of an eye. At the sound of the last trumpet the dead
will be
raised. We will all be changed, so that we will never die again.
53 Our dead and decaying
bodies will be
changed into bodies that won’t die or decay.
54 The bodies we now have
are weak and
can die. But they will be changed into bodies that are eternal. Then
the
Scriptures will come true, “Death has lost the battle!
55 Where is its victory?
Where is its
sting?”
56 Sin is what gives death
its sting,
and the Law is the power behind sin.
57 But thank God for letting
our Lord
Jesus Christ give us the victory!
This
is why our
focus
should not be so much on what we do as what we are. Rather than trying
to earn
our way into salvation through our law-keeping efforts, we should be
asking God
for His righteousness to clean us up from the inside.
When we
are
cleaned up
from the inside (because God has made us holy by His presence in us),
we are
then set apart from the rest of the human race. That’s what it means to
be
holy; we are set apart. Then, as we learn about sin, and what sin does
to us,
we learn that sin is a hot stove! We learn that we need to avoid
touching it,
or else we’re going to get burned.
Do you go
around
walking into walls a lot? You don’t? Why not? Probably because you
learned a
long time ago not to do it! You probably learned not to walk into walls
so long
ago that you don’t even remember learning not to walk into walls. It
became a
part of you early on, right about the time you learned to stay away
from
stoves. So you incorporated those two skills into your life, and you
went on to
learn other things.
So once
we
learned
about sin, we tried to stay away from it. I say we tried to stay away
from it
because there is something about sin and humans that makes separating
one from
the other hard to do at first. There’s something about stoves and
little
fingers that make it hard to keep them apart at first.
But with
practice, we
learn to overcome sin. Well, we learn to overcome most sin. We learn
not to do
certain things which we come to realize are sinful in nature. As a
result, we
aren’t getting burned by sin as often as we were before. But there are
those
sins we have trouble with. There are those sins we might really enjoy,
or that
seem to be stronger than we are, and we can’t seem to give them up. But
overall, we manage to stay out of trouble, for the most part.
Do you
still
walk into
walls? Do you still burn yourself? Not often, I suppose, but once in
awhile. You
know better than to walk into walls and grab hot stoves, don’t you?
Sure you
do. But once in awhile it still happens. Fortunately, minor burns, or
bumps on
the forehead, aren’t fatal, or permanent, and they don’t keep you from
living
your life. You keep trying not to bump and burn, but it happens.
Now, if
you
manage to
get through life without bumping and burning, have you earned anything?
If you
manage to get through life without sinning, have you earned anything?
No, we
don’t earn anything by the way we live. But the way we live has a
direct impact
on how happy we are going to be, how often we get black eyes and red
fingers,
and what our frame of mind is going to be each day.
We still get
up every
morning, and we’re one day older. We haven’t earned it; it just
happens. We get
up every morning, and it’s a new day. We didn’t make it a new day;
that’s just
the way God made it. If we can manage to get into the kitchen without
bouncing
off a wall, and cook our breakfast without burning our fingers, we’re
probably
going to have a pretty good day. And each day, we’re one day older. And
walls
and stoves have nothing to do with it.
We don’t
get there by doing something, like missing the wall. We
get there
by being something: careful, intelligent, and wise. We
don’t get
into the resurrection by continuing to grow as a plant; we get there
because,
at some point, someone is going to change us into something else, and
then we
can achieve our potential, grow really tall, give shade, and provide a
place
for birds to come make their nests.
I hope
this
helps to
demonstrate what I mean by some of the things I said in the article. We
don’t
earn our salvation; it’s a gift. But God expects us to live by His
commandments. Really, He put them there for our own protection, for our
own
happiness, so we can have happy lives now, as mustard seeds.
Do we
obey
God because
we have to, or because we want to? Well, that business about obeying
because
you “have to” sounds like a spoiled, rebellious child, doesn’t it?
There’s an
attitude that keeps looking out the window when those words come out
the door.
What I mean is, you can hear it in people’s mouths, and you can see it
in their
eyes.
But let’s
say that’s not you. You aren’t really being rebellious, just curious
about the
whole thing. In that case, if you have any doubts about whether you
“have to,”
but you aren’t really trying to be rebellious, stubborn, or spoiled,
maybe it’s
time to run, not walk, to your private place of prayer and drop down on
your
knees and ask God to help you see where you are wrong, for surely you
are the
one in the wrong, not God.
In the
article, I put
the whole thing in the context of the happy marriage to the second
husband.
That’s the key to understanding the whole legalism question. The second
guy
married the woman and made her very happy. She was delighted to be
married to
the second guy, and showed her appreciation in many ways, including the
happy
obedience we need to have toward our loving Husband, which is how this
story
portrays God.
We are in
a
relationship with God that most people running around on the streets
don’t
have. That should make us happy. We really did nothing to deserve it,
and
couldn’t possibly have earned it if we tried. He chose us. It doesn’t
matter
who else He will choose later, or who He chose a century or two ago.
This story
is best understood when we look only at our own relationship to God. He
is the
doting Husband, and we are the happy wife, and that should reflect how
we feel
about our relationship to God.
Unfortunately,
there
are a lot of people who can’t easily relate to this concept of a happy
marriage
to a wonderful Husband. First of all, half of us are male, and we have
no
really accurate idea what it means to be a wife at all, let alone a
happy wife.
Then, among the females in the audience, how many of them really know
what it
means to be happily married to a wonderful husband? Husbands, whose
fault is
that?
So let’s
continue with
whatever amount of understanding we have about how it feels to be the
happy
wife of the greatest Husband in the universe. Let’s continue to
investigate how
it feels to love God so much, to be filled with so much appreciation
and
gratitude, that we would gladly do what He asks.
Messiah
said,
“Why even
bother calling me Lord if you aren’t going to do the things I say?”
(Luke 6:46,
paraphrased) He said, “If you love me, do what I say” (John 14:15,
paraphrased). He also said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father”
(John
14:9, paraphrased). Based on
that, why
would we call the Father “God” or “Lord” and not do the things He says?
If we say
we love God, why wouldn’t we want to do the things He asks us to do?
Not
because He’s a harsh, stern God who orders us to do things that are
harmful to
us. Not because He’s forcing us to do things against our will. That was
the
first husband in the story. This is the
second husband
we’re talking about. We are so head-over-heels in love with this God
that we
can’t wait to come running to Him when He calls, because He’s going to
throw
His huge arms around us and hug us forever.
There is
a
prophecy
that tells us:
14
Sing,
O
Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all
your
heart, O Daughter of Jerusalem!
15 The
LORD
has taken
away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The LORD, the King
of
Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm.
16 On
that
day they
will say to Jerusalem,
“Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands hang limp.
17 The
LORD
your God is
with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he
will
quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing”
(Zepheniah
3:14-17).
This is
the
God that
rejoices and sings over us! He is with us, even now, in spirit; we
don’t need
to be afraid.
And our
Husband would
like us to obey Him. Who wouldn’t want to obey a perfect God who
doesn’t even
have the battle against sin we mortals do? He wants us to stay away
from
touching hot stoves.
Do we
stay
away from
touching hot stoves because we have to? Because we’re
told to? Or
is it because we’ve touched enough hot stoves in our lives, all types
of
stoves, to know that we have no business going near a hot stove? We
know
better. It’s part of our lives.
I want
to
stay away from hot stoves!
How about
you?