A More Supreme Truth

Jesus lived in a time when all kinds of things He didn't like were perfectly legal. In fact, He was crucified under Roman and Jewish laws there were completely against His will.

And yet, what did He say to government leaders when He had the chance?

• "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here" (Jn 18:36).
• "For this reason I was born, and for this reason I have come into the world: in order that I can testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice" (Jn 18:37).
• "You would not have any authority over me unless it was given to you from above" (Jn 19:11).
• And sometimes, Jesus just said nothing at all to defend Himself.

Jesus never tried to overthrow the government. His was not a political movement. His movement was to transform the world through transforming people with the Gospel. He handpicked and trained ordinary people He called His "disciples" to send out just as He was sent (Jn 20:21), to carry on the same mission in the same manner.

Paul, who was one of the Apostles who followed Jesus after His death, was a most prolific emissary throughout the Roman world. He was a full citizen of the empire and saw the atrocities firsthand. Even so, his campaign was not to change the empire's rules, but to change people within the empire with the Gospel. Some of those folks even lived in the very heart of Rome (see the entire book of Romans). When he closed out his letter to the church in Philippi, he said "All the saints greet you, and especially those of Caesar’s household" (Php 4:22). Apparently, some within Caesar's own household were followers of Christ. They weren't there to take over - they were folks holding down their "government jobs" in the center of it all ... as followers of Jesus.

Luke wrote two long volumes to his friend Theophilus (cf. Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-5). There is strong speculation among scholars that Theophilus, a follower of Jesus, was well-placed in government. But the accounts Luke writes to Theophilus are not stories of overthrowing the Roman government, but rather stories of the world being turned "upside down" (Acts 17:6) by people sharing and living the truth about Jesus.

In light of recent events, I want to encourage you no matter what your view is of how Christians should be involved in the affairs of government. Some of you don't care one lick about politics, some of you intentionally withdraw from it, some of you talk about it and vote and maybe dabble here and there, and some of you dive right into the heart of it. I want to encourage all of you: 

No matter how you choose to engage the affairs of government, Jesus' primary means of changing the world has always been through His followers telling others about Him, and loving and living like He did.

That's it. That simple, that relational, that normal, that daily. Not just one or the other - not just talking about Him and not just living like He did and not even just being really loving, but all three. There may be all kinds of secondary means (which we can debate). But the primary means never changed. Therefore, it must remain the modern Christian's primary means, too, no matter what.

This neither precludes nor prescribes any particular approach to being involved in the political process. Some followers of Jesus were from the very beginning well-placed in government. Paul's bacon was saved several times because he had good relations with government leaders (and he was threatened by the bad relations!). Others had their noses down, focused on the families and work. But even in the context of a government far worse than most modern Western nations, the strategy never wavered. Followers of Jesus talking about Him, and loving and living like He did.

To rely more on any other method is to claim we have a better strategy than He did. To expect any other method to be more effective is to claim His way wasn't timeless.

I Warned You Not to Put These Two Together

Two beloved passages of Scripture, memorized, quoted, read for encouragement, recited at weddings, but not often put together. That's a bit odd, since they are about the same topic.

The first passage: Love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 19:19; Mk 12:31; Lk 10:27; Ro 13:9; Ga 5:14; Jas 2:8). Jesus calls this the second greatest commandment of all, second only to loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. That must be pretty important!

The second passage: The "love chapter" (1 Cor 13), which is best remembered from verse 4 on: Love is patient, love is kind, ... It's a lovely verse to think of with your sweetheart in mind.

However, I don't think I've ever heard these two great passages put together. Let's give it a try:

⁴Love is patient with its neighbor, love is kind to its neighbor and is not jealous of its neighbor's stuff; love does not brag to its neighbor and is not arrogant around its neighbor, ⁵does not act unbecomingly toward its neighbor or its neighbor's spouse; it does not seek its own in competition with its neighbor, is not provoked by its neighbor, does not take into account a wrong suffered by its neighbor, ⁶does not rejoice in its neighbor's unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth along with its neighbor;⁷bears all things perpetrated by its neighbor, believes all things for its neighbor's benefit, hopes all things for its neighbor, endures all things by its neighbor. 

⁸Love never fails its neighbor ... ¹³But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is loving your neighbor as yourself ... second only to loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Think of your neighbors. Include people of a different faith or political stripe. Think of the not-so-nice neighbors. Think of the people in our communities who end up in the news. Reread this combined passage with these neighbors in mind. Yeah ... those neighbors. Go ahead ... reread it. I'll wait.

Now, go love your neighbor as yourself.

My friend has cancer

My friend has cancer. It's not the worst kind. But neither is it "no big deal." It's a big deal. I've had friends who have had, or presently have, cancer. Some are now cancer free. Some succumbed to it. Almost everyone who reads this can say pretty much all that I've just said.

My friend told me about it through a message, but we haven't been able to meet face to face until recently. As I was driving to our lunch, I was praying for what to say, how to minister to him, how to help him. What I wanted to do, and what I was praying for, was to somehow be a rescuer, if even a little bit. I know I can't "fix" the problem or completely rescue him. But I wanted to be a junior rescuer in some way. Then I could feel better about my friend having cancer.

I also have cancer - cancer of the ego.

My friend doesn't need me to be his rescuer. He doesn't need me to somehow feel a little better about the situation. He doesn't need me to feel helpful. He doesn't need me to have the answers, to say the right thing, to have the right comforting words, or to make him smile. All of those things might be helpful (maybe!), but it's not what he needs.

What he needs is Jesus to be Jesus in every way. Whether he makes a full recovery or struggles with this for a while, or even (against the odds in this case) succumb to this, he doesn't need me to be or do anything rescue-y. He needs Jesus. And in this particular case, he has Jesus, and in a very strong way.

If he needs anything at all from me, it's brotherly love. Agape love, no matter what, in every circumstance, with or without the right words, with or without helping, with or without making anything better or easier, with or without me being comfortable. He needs Jesus' love, and in part, he needs it through me.

"Just love" sounds unhelpful, even weak. It is weak - I can't make it all better. But it's infinitely helpful.

Your friends don't have to have cancer to need Jesus' love through you.

License, Legalism, Love

Last Sunday, I added a last-minute thought to the message which 1) was a much bigger thought than I gave it room for, 2) may have been distracting to the main message, 3) was not thought through fully, and 4) the one thing some people really latched onto. I still haven't decided if it was a good addition or not!

The idea was that in Christ, we have three possible paths to tread: License, Legalism, or Love. When we went through Galatians over a year ago, we talked about License, Legalism, and Liberty, which is a theologically accurate list, but I like the focus of Love more than that of Liberty.

License is the idea that because I have my sins forgiven by grace, I can live as I please, do whatever my flesh desires. Hey, it's all going to be forgiven, right? Sure, it might be disrespectful to the Cross, but if it's covered, it's covered. Paul repeated teaches against this view, especially in Galatians.

Legalism is the idea that our righteousness and our standing before God is dependent on how well we adhere to a certain moral code. There are plenty of non-Christian religions that are blatantly legalistic. Although it's relatively rare to find an evangelical church that teaches this outright (there are some!), this more often finds its way into church by stealth. A church can believe in grace and teach grace, but still end up with teachings and sermons that boil down to "try harder, do it right, it's all on your shoulders." We can inadvertently create an attitude of legalism while preaching grace.

Liberty is the idea that in Christ, we finally have the freedom and ability to obey Him. We have been set free from sin and death and set free for following Him from our heart. The bonds are gone, but we are also enabled for the first time to actually obey, which we choose to do freely.

But I prefer the third element to be labeled Love. Not because Liberty is inaccurate in any way, but because Love encompasses Liberty and so much more.

Love is more than an idea ... it's a relationship, it's a motive, it's a mode, it's an attachment, it's so many things. Rather than freely disobeying God (License) or obeying God in bondage (Legalism), it is freely obeying God drenched by love in every way. We obey Christ because we love, love is our attitude while following Him, we love Him by obeying Him, and we even love by obeying the command to love. We have been freed because of love, Christ's will has been revealed to us because of love, and His will is how He provides for us a way to love Him.

"Liberty" describes the freedom and enablement we have because of Christ. "Love" describes the what, the why, and the how to exercise that freedom and enablement.

It's easy to slip back into legalism, where we try to create a set of rules. It's even easier to slip into license - just do whatever we desire to do, whether or not it is Christ's will. Loving relationships are not the easiest routes, but they are clearly the best ones, because love is the only path of the three that reflects Christ's character.

The Greatest Commandment and Worship

It's a little big change - or a big little change. I'm not sure which.

The worship service will be a bit different on Sunday, although not radically so. And yet, the concept behind it is something I've not seen anyone do before. We will structure the service based on Mark 12:30, where Jesus tells a scribe that the greatest commandment is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." We will structure our worship around this statement as a way to live it out together in worship.

With all of our heart: We will worship together in music as the worship team leads us through songs and prayer all related to the theme of the week. The worship leaders work hard to consider the passage and theme in order to select music that draws our attention to the same truths, so that we are teaching the same things, whether by music or by the message.

With all our soul: Dan will lead us in corporate prayer for one another. This is also a time for us to worship through the offering. We often think of the offering as the practical necessity of running a church, but it can truly be another act of worship. The word offering itself suggests the spiritual act of giving of ourselves for the ministry of the church.

With all our mind: We will have our normal short message for the kids, and then send them off to Children's Church and Junior Church. Then we will open up the Word together to worship God with our minds (and hearts, souls, and strength, but moreso the mind).

With all our strength: The last part will include sharing events plus ministry opportunities and needs with the family business of a few announcements. The worship team will send us off with a final song, and then rather than a normal benediction, we will have more of a commissioning to send us all into the week with our mission to the world firmly in mind.

So, the worship service won't be radically different than we're used to, but a few things have been moved around from our norm, plus we want to better reinforce the various aspects of worship as Jesus describes in the Great Commandment, with our final thought being on the Great Commission.

We'll give this a spin for a few weeks and see what we think. Again, it's not a huge change, but I do want you to be aware of the thoughts that have gone into how the worship service will be put together.

Does He Love Something Because It's Good, or is Something Good Because He Loves It?

A clever college student recently asked me this question. He was in a philosophy class studying Plato's account of Socrates' trial, and the question came up in class - is the virtuous thing virtuous because God loves it (i.e., His love of it makes it virtuous), or does God love the virtuous thing because of the fact that it's already virtuous (i.e., it possesses virtue, therefore God loves it).

On the one hand, if something is made virtuous by God's love for it, then the "goodness" of something is not an absolute attribute - it is not good apart from God's love for it. Furthermore, whatever God chooses to not love would thereby be made "bad," and God becomes the cause of evil.

On the other hand, if God loves something because it is good, then we have something that is good apart from God. This would mean that something other than God defined it to be good, and then we would have someone telling God what to consider good and what to consider bad. Someone would have taken away one of God's attributes.

Either way, we end up with a scenario we don't like.

After tossing this idea around for a bit, realizing that learned philosophers could very quickly and easily show me where my ideas are full of holes, I came to the opinion that my friend was facing a false dichotomy. He was given "A" and "B" as the only two possible answers - that it must be "A" or it must be "B." I think there is a better option than these two.

Something is "good" only as much as it resembles God's character. An act of kindness is only as good as its resemblance to God's kindness. A generous act is only as good as its resemblance to God's generosity. Love is only as good as it resembles the God of love. By the same token, something is "bad" to the degree that it departs from God's character. A lie departs from the character of the God of truth. Hatred departs from the character of the God of love.

The goodness of something does not exist apart from God, but is defined by God's character. Goodness is not a quality that exists apart from God's existence and nature. God loves something because it resembles His own character, not because it possesses its own good character apart from Him.

So, neither option is true. Something is not made good because God loves it. God doesn't love something because it has the independent quality of being good. The goodness of something is determined by its resemblance to God, and God loves the things that have that resemblance.

What does this matter? Is this just a philosophical treadmill, upon which you run and run, but never get anywhere?

I believe it's important at least in the point that God also loves us sinners, but not because we're good! That's how amazing grace is! He loves us anyway. He love us despite the fact that we don't strongly resemble His character. We are naturally quite unlike His character, and yet we are still the objects of His love. Furthermore, if we become more "good" by resembling Him more, He loves to see that, but He doesn't love us more because of it. He already loves us completely. We cannot garner more of God's love by becoming more "good" (even though He loves to see us become more "good").

Grace, then, allows us to be treated as perfectly "good," perfectly like God's character, even though we don't resemble Him that much (yet!). And then in Christ, His love for us will eventually make us that good - He will cause us to resemble Christ (1 John 3:1-3).

God's grace is truly amazing! Scandalous even.

For God so loved the world...

I don't like to talk too much about the original languages of the Bible when I teach. I'll bring it up when I think it's helpful, but it's usually not all that helpful, really. It sounds impressive, it feels like we're learning something, it's interesting to a number of people, but let's be honest: sometimes an aorist is just an aorist - you know what I mean? (If not, then I've made my point.)

I do, however, try to study aspects of the original languages when I prepare a teaching. I try to do good homework, and make sure that what I teach is as accurate as possible. I need to do the work (and I should do more of it than I do!), but that doesn't mean that the details need to fill time in a sermon. More often than not, it improves preaching without becoming the content of preaching.

Then there are those times when it is necessary to spend a little, or a lot, of time describing the original languages. It's a tough call to know when it's helpful, and when it just strokes my own ego. ("Hey, look, I can't remember Hebrew grammar very well, but I can still pronounce it! Impressed?")

One of those cases where it is actually helpful is in perhaps the most recognizable verse in all the Bible - John 3:16. Most translations read something like, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son..." This is an accurate English translation of the original language. But there's a distinction that Greek makes that English can mask.

"God so loved the world." If you're like me, for a long time I took this to mean that God loved the world so much that look! He gave us something! His only Son! Wow! He sure loves us a lot.

The translation is accurate. The word translated "so" can mean "so much," but it can also mean "thusly." One is magnitude, the other is manner. It's the difference between "she is so smart" and "she carefully arranged the flowers just so."

If it's the second definition that applies, then the verse says, "For God thusly loved the world that He gave His only Son..." (the NET has "For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son...").

That's different. Not monumentally. Nothing in our theology is shaken because of this. But it's different.

Does this say that God loved us that much (so D.A. Carson), or does it say God loved us in that manner (so R.H. Gundry)? The second choice is the most common use of that word, but there are cases when it means the first choice. Some even argue for both meanings, since John is no stranger to intentionally picking a word to mean two things. Certainly, both statements are true. But what is this verse saying?

The Gospel of John uses that same Greek word 13 other times, and in every one of those cases, it means thusly. Therefore, I believe that it means thusly in 3:16. In what manner did God love us? By sacrificially sending His one and only Son to die on a cross so that we can have eternal life by faith. That's the manner in which He loved us.

Yes, He loved us that much, but He loved us in that manner - which is what I believe John 3:16 is telling us.

(By the way, the word "loved" is in the aorist tense - just in case you were wondering.)