Redemption – The Word Worker

Whose Righteousness is Our Passion?

By the time Jesus was born into the physical world, the Jewish culture had become centered around scholarship. Status, wealth, and privilege were guaranteed to increase according to the detail of one’s familiarity with the Hebrew scriptures and the eloquent certainty with which one spoke of them. Their entire political system revolved around heated arguments between religious factions regarding what details they insisted on enforcing as immutable law. Being known as a teacher of teachers became the highest honor a man could aspire to receive, and the focus of manipulation and intrigue.

Most of these ambitious teachers carried great passion for scripture. They truly believed that their focus was righteous; jealous on God’s behalf and eager to defend a cause they saw as threatened (obedience to God), they frantically opposed any slight change they perceived as laxity and punished with impunity the smallest of perceived infractions. Because of this they were both respected and feared; they were the experts, how could they possibly be wrong?

Paul, called to be the voice of God throughout the Roman empire, wrote of these scholars and of those who revered them in his letter to the struggling church in Rome itself. He wrote of their drive and their passion, but he wrote with grief that in spite of all their scholarship they had no knowledge. When God appeared before them they couldn’t accept Him because in their focus on words and details they had lost sight of the original author. They became authors of a new righteousness that they could control, that merely used God’s name as cushioning for their own authority. They had replaced Him with themselves without even realizing what they were doing.

Paul grieved because through the drive and passion of the scholars they and their adherents were lost. They had put all their faith, and thus all their fear, into the success or failure of human knowledge and actions to reach perfection. The love and mercy inherent in Christ escaped them because they had scoured it out of themselves in terror. They sacrificed every hope God offered through misplaced ideals that could never be realized.

There is only one righteousness, and it has nothing to do with what we as humans can know or achieve. It can only come from God, and is only given to those who long with every fiber of their being for His presence in their lives. Humans cannot earn a badge of righteousness and we have no jurisdiction to pass judgment on any human’s spiritual state. We can only feed souls, water hearts, and reach for God. In that passion His righteousness is reflected, His mercy poured out, His children rescued.

Romans 9:30–33; 10:1-4 (CSB): What should we say then? Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained righteousness—namely the righteousness that comes from faith. But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law., Why is that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, Look, I am putting a stone in Zion to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and the one who believes on him will not be put to shame.Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation. I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Since they are ignorant of the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,…

Outside the Boundaries

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When Paul wrote to the Christians in the city of Rome, they were beginning to fracture as a group from the pressures of human diversity. As capital of the empire, Rome was a cultural conglomerate. Trade and politics brought representatives from every conceivable background into close proximity, and the call of Christ left no group out. As usual with humans, most found reconciling their cultural heritage with spiritual existence in Christ confusing. As a result, each group brought a different set of traditions, different religious customs, different systems of laws that they expected to reign supreme, and the groups squabbled constantly about whose expectations best pleased God.

The Christians who came from a Jewish background particularly struggled to rise above it. For millenia they had been held up as the nation that represented God, the only nation whose entire political and social structure had been instituted directly by God. Despite recognizing Jesus as the promised Messiah, despite understanding that all nations were now welcomed into the kingdom, many were convinced that the only path into the kingdom was through continuing rigid observance of Sinai law and legal traditions that time had built upon it.

Paul wrote an entire letter explaining the fallacy of this thinking to an increasingly divided church. He reminded these people surrounded by lawmaking on a daily basis that laws had limits. Laws governing physical behaviors only exist within specific physical boundaries. For example, marriage is a legally binding contract between two people, but when one or the other dies, the contract ends since the dead person can no longer fulfill his or her responsibilities. By the same token, failure to behave within the boundaries of a physical system comes with clearly defined consequences, the greatest being forfeiture of life as the price for treason.

The Sinai Law had been no exception, had even exceeded all other systems in its specificity and in the weight placed upon infraction. Other systems were instituted by humans with human enforcers; the Sinai Law was instituted by God Himself and enforced directly by His hand. Its design, as Paul reminded the Romans, was to emphasize how deeply enslaved to sin humanity truly is, how treasonous to our Creator we behave on a daily basis. The price for such treason had already been demonstrated by an incalculable flood that claimed the lives of an entire earth full of people and reshaped an entire world. And even that was not a great enough consequence, as mankind habitually repeated the same treason.

Jesus, God in the frame of humanity, laid His own head under the executioners blade having committed no treason against Himself. His incomprehensible purity canceled the price for our treason, but only if we recognize it. With no more price, no more lawful consequence, the system of law became obsolete, unenforced by the Creator and unenforceable by humans. While the physical world remains, humans will continue to shuffle boundaries and systems devised by ourselves for the purpose of governing our physical existence. These are necessary for those who cannot see beyond the physical existence and backed by God in so far as they are founded in His character. However, they are still prisons that enslave us to our basest desires.

God’s prescribed system, its purpose extinct after the execution of its consequences, ceased to exist except as a memorial of His character. With the ultimate price paid, we have the opportunity to plead guilty without fear of punishment. Jesus stands holding the prison doors open from the outside. Our minds have to step outside with Him, outside of the need for physical boundaries and into a character not our own. We are changed, guilt and the reason for it left behind. We see ourselves and all humans as He sees us, so limited in our capacity that we can never hope for perfection, but loved so deeply that childlike adoration and imitation are more than enough for Him. The shackles of fear and insecurity that enslave us to our inadequacy disintegrate, and we are embraced as long-lost children.

Unveiled

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II Cor. 3:13-18; Ex. 34:34-35

When Moses descended from the presence of God for the second time, bringing the record of God on slabs of stone, the people of Israel avoided him in terror. Though Moses himself, having spent so much time bathed in the glory of God and having no desire for power for himself, was completely unaware that Glory beamed from his own face, the people could see it all too well. The selfish fear that drove them to cover their ears at the voice of God held them apart from His presence in Moses. From that time forward, Moses was only able to speak with God without covering his face, a shadowy reminder of exactly how great a separation existed between God and the people through whom He had chosen to work His will.

Like the veil shading Moses’s face from a people unwilling to approach God, the system of governance included in that stone record served as a curtain over their reluctant hearts. Every act prescribed within it emphasized the darkness human choices had allowed to stain the world, contrasting it starkly with the pure light of the perfect God. Every event in the future of the nation would prove the necessity of the rigid and often harsh methods required under that legal system in order to prove desire for connection with God. Even such unmistakable symbols of their need were twisted to be self-serving, and in the end they resorted to murderous destruction rather than expose themselves to His light.

When God Himself stepped from His grave in physical form and returned to Heaven in the cloud of glory that had filled the Tabernacle and shone through Moses’s face, the need for that separation to be emphasized ended. The hope and promise that underlay everything the nation of Israel experienced became present reality. Many, uneasy in the freedom and open communion found in the spirit of the resurrected Son, clung to the rigidity of the Israelite legal system. As God ripped the covering, the barrier, away they hung on for dear life and so barricaded themselves from true fellowship with Him.

Those who let longing for God outweigh their fear became like Moses, transformed into a vessel for the glory of God. The selfishness that held darkness between them and God was banished. The need for the rigid rules and rituals engraved on stone slabs was burned away by the fire of God’s presence.

Unlike Moses, who wore the veil himself as a reminder to others, our veil is only a reflection of ourselves. If we maintain a separation from God’s offered freedom by clinging to physical structures that keep control within our hands, we have a veil of our own choosing. Only by relinquishing all control, by exchanging fear for desperate longing, are we unveiled and able to stand in the Glory that is God.

Water and Mud

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The images of flowing water and being washed clean dominate the scriptures, but one in particular is my favorite. Revelation paints a picture of a river rushing down from God’s throne through the roots of the tree of life to cleanse the world of a great curse. That image has always fired my imagination, and I sometimes can almost feel the water rushing through me carrying away every trace of unwanted filth.

There’s another image that often troubles me when I think of the great river, an ugly one not specifically painted in Revelation but one nevertheless seen in the behavior of mankind from the garden to now. It’s a person, unrecognizable under layers of grime, half buried in thick heavy clay. This person, upon seeing the flood coming, instead of rejoicing in the power that can free them from the mud and grime, begins to frantically use globs of their muddy trap to build a wall to block the water, growing dirtier and sinking deeper in the mire with every handful while salvation flows mere inches away.

In a way it’s an understandable reaction. We tend to be terrified of power held outside of ourselves, and our terror focuses our efforts on desperate self-preservation rather than reason. Perhaps, in the physical world, there is purpose in such a reaction, but spiritually it makes no sense. Christ’s sacrifice offers freedom from the mire of uncertainty and fear, a return to the purity of our origin and connection, peace unreachable from the muddy banks of human opinions and demands. Clinging to anything stemming from human concerns builds a wall between us and that cleansing, life-bringing flood.

The Self-Limited God

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The Everlasting. The Omnipotent. The I AM. The One without physical form, without physical space, without limits of any kind. This God, the Alpha and Omega, Creator of all things, took on the form of His creation. We repeat this often, and quote scriptures about it, but I wonder if we truly grasp the enormity of it.

Many religions have stories of deities who took on human form. These deities were either already limited in power and as flawed as humans, or they merely appeared human temporarily to deliver messages or enjoy themselves while retaining all of their power. Only this one is different.

He didn’t appear as an emperor or great warrior. He didn’t appear surrounded by prestige and wealth. He came as a baby. An actual baby, not the perverted vision of one. He arrived squalling and cold, blinded by even the dim light of a candle-lit clay-walled barn, flailing limbs not answering any but reflexive signals from the still-developing brain of a human infant. He could have exerted power to change that, but He didn’t.

He lived as a child, experiencing the bumps and bruises and frustrations of learning to accomplish tasks using human hands and feet. He submitted with respect and honor to the training given Him by human parents whose own understanding of His law was flawed and stumbling. He endured the privation that was part of the life of a poor working family, and faced the inevitable injuries and humiliations of apprenticeship in a manual trade. He could have exerted power to change all that, but He didn’t.

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He became a nomad without home or income, endured starvation, thirst, exposure, and fatigue. He wept and raged, prayed and laughed. He expended all of the energy His human body could contain on others, teaching and comforting. What power He chose to access as a grown man was also directed solely into others, even when hardship brought him to the brink of His human mortality. He became the subject of taunts, the target of prideful rage, and the focus of selfish demands. He could have exerted power to change all that, but He didn’t.

He was dragged to trial for crimes He didn’t commit, beaten and humiliated and tortured as nothing more than a pawn in a political game. Railroad spikes were pounded through the nerve bundles in His wrists and ankles before He was left to hang from a beam for hours, every breath an agony, His life slowly dripping away in the blood that oozed from wounds not allowed to close. He could have exerted power to change all that, but He didn’t.

Can you imagine what it must have been like? Can you imagine being limitless and yet trapped inside human limitations? Can you imagine being in that situation by your own choice alone? Can you imagine choosing such humiliation to rescue your creation that had rejected you, that would despise you for the poverty-stricken and unimpressive position you had chosen, that would still somehow be unable to ignore your truth and would hate you so much for it they would destroy your human life?

His body was wrapped in linen and hastily placed in a donated tomb. Because the Passover Sabbath had begun, the usual burial rites involving fragrant oils to preserve the body were delayed until Sunday. On Sunday morning, after having been released from His self-imposed limitations, as His human body showed signs of decomposition and decay, He once again stepped into it and changed it irrevocably. By that unfathomable action, He freed all of humanity as well. What a wondrous, unimaginable, selfless, self-limiting, unfathomable God.

Debtor’s Prison

Galatians 3:21–26 (CSB): “Is the law therefore contrary to God’s promises? Absolutely not! For if the law had been granted with the ability to give life, then righteousness would certainly be on the basis of the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin’s power, so that the promise might be given on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe. Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed. The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus.”

In past centuries, those who found themselves unable to pay money owed were confined in debtor’s prison. This usually meant a life sentence of poverty and humiliation. There was menial work available in the prison, but it paid a pittance, and inmates were required to pay rent and necessities for themselves. Unless family on the outside was able to work for higher wages, or someone took pity and paid off the debt for them, they died in prison more deeply in debt than before.

The laws that required people to pay their debts were not bad laws. They were necessary to show right versus wrong, and to uphold right behavior. The problem lay with a society that could not live up to the standards upon which the laws were built.

Similarly, God’s laws given to the Israelite nation on Mt. Sinai were perfect because they codified the character of God. They showed God’s people the difference in good and evil, something they had lost sight of surrounded by idolatrous nations. However, because laws by their very nature focus on consequences for violations, they tend to be negative in nature, holding our attention on what we should not do rather than on how we should live.

Physical nations create systems of laws by which we earn reward or punishment. As citizens of a nation we are justified, or declared lawful, by how obedient we are to that country’s system of laws. However, man’s laws are as flawed and changeable as man himself. God’s laws are built on the unchangeable standard of His own character, a perfect standard that imperfect humanity cannot meet. The Israelites could not “pay what was owed” and were therefore imprisoned for life as debtors under the laws.

Then Christ came, living the perfect life according to the law because He was the law. He paid the price that humanity could not, showing once and for all that only He could declare us lawful. No longer imprisoned by laws that highlight our sin, we are freed by His loving grace to live as His mirrors. No longer are we trapped by human weakness that keeps us imperfect. We no longer need laws to show us how or why to avoid evil, because Good made Himself a beacon that cannot be missed. God’s debtor’s prison is abolished forever, no debt remains to be paid.

Some of the unfortunate souls who landed in debtor’s prison did so due to failure of honest efforts to live lawfully, and did work very hard to pay what little they could. They lived in hope that despite everything they would one day be free. Some of those who lived under the Israelite laws tried with all their might to obey, and their failures made them hold to the hope of mercy all the more faithfully. Others under both systems decided there was no hope, or sought hope from sources that only deepened their imprisonment. Some who were rescued failed to learn from the mercy given, throwing it away to re-imprison themselves. Many today fail to recognize that Hope has become Reality, and bind themselves again into debt that will never be paid with twisted words of fear and control. Relatively few grasp freedom with both hands and work with the grateful confidence of the saved to prove that the prison doors are wide open and the only force keeping anyone inside is their own choice.

What is Liberty?

For those of us who are citizens of the United States of America, this weekend marks the celebration of our ancestors’ declaration of liberty from political, economic, and social oppression. The centuries following that declaration have brought many debates over and changes to how we as humans apply the principles upon which that declaration was founded. Because as humans we are vulnerable to Satan’s manipulation of good things, we don’t always get it right, but our mistakes do not make the principles false. Scripture is full of the concept of liberty, taught to humans by the God who created them in His image. True liberty is founded upon our identity as the offspring of the perfect Creator, given life by His own breath. It is freedom to embrace that core identity in its entirety, to live the image of God in a world whose will is broken by the abuses of Satan. It transcends all human cultures, politics, social structures, economies, and desires. It is the inescapable and unquenchable result of faith, and leaves its unmistakeable mark on the behavior of those who enjoy it. Let’s make sure our definition of liberty matches that of the one who IS Liberty.

Isaiah 61:1 The spirit of the Lord God is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners;…

Romans 8:20-21 For the creation was subjected to futility – not willingly, but because of him who subjected it – in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children.

2 Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Galatians 2:4-5 This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus in order to enslave us. But we did not give up and submit to these people for even a moment, so that the truth of the gospel would be preserved for you.

Galatians 5:1, 13-23 For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery… For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another. I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things – as I warned you before – that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Follower of Jesus

Have you ever thought about the disciples of Christ as human beings? People just like you? Can you recognize the following descriptions based on what we know about them from scripture? Do you recognize yourself? Might Jesus have called you if you lived in first century Palestine?

A blue-collar worker, impulsive and outspoken, trying to support a family, never quite staying ahead of expenses, fed up with oppression and ready to fight for king and freedom
A blue-collar worker, lives with his brother, searching for more of God than religious leadership offered, ready to trust, focused on political freedom from oppression
A blue-collar worker, co-owner of a family business, hot-headed, loyal, ambitious, honest, deep thinker, likes things simple
Seeking more of God than religious leadership offered, a good friend, excited to follow God, eager to bring more people with him, focused on physical solutions to problems
A slow listener, loyal, skeptical, unshakeable once convinced
Ambitious, materialistic, black sheep of the family, considers God expendable compared to comfort and success, unsatisfied
Proud of ethnic heritage, fierce proponent of independence from oppressive political system, militant political activist, trained fighter, rigidly adherent to the religious system passed down from previous generations
Ambitious, selfish, lacking conviction, dishonest, disloyal, belatedly regretful of decisions, convinced of hopelessness
Naïve teenager, committed to future of poverty and hard work, rule follower, trusting, condemned by society
Possessed by multiple demons, outcast from society, unable to function, desperate
Housewife, hospitable, focused on making a good impression, respected in the community, constantly busy
Leader, teacher, rigidly adherent to religious structure, secretly conflicted, sincere, afraid of society, cautiously hopeful
Soldier, leader, loyal to the ruling political system, unaware of God, desperate for help
Classically educated, financially well off, militantly religious, respected by religious leadership, committed to serving God, murderer, hateful

Something about each of the above was changed by contact with Jesus, but not everything. Often what seems the worst traits became great strengths; other times, the worst traits became the catalyst for great service. What will you let Jesus do with you?

The Mercy Seat

On the Day of Atonement the High Priest carried the blood of the sacrificial bull and goat behind the veil and sprinkle it on the mercy seat. This was a symbol of God’s cleansing and sealing the people for His own holy purpose. It was also a solemn moment, as on the Day of Atonement the Lord Himself hovered behind the veil in the form of the cloud by which He guided His people to their promised home.

For the Israelites this was something to be longed for, a connection that only the divinely chosen representative was allowed to make with God. It was a moment for which the entire nation made solemn preparation, a moment of purification for every individual within the nation. It was the day that the death of sin was covered, overwhelmed, with the life of blood.

The word that is translated “mercy seat” literally means atonement, or reconciliation. This ceremony of blood, the solemn entrance to the separated presence, symbolized the restoration of a broken relationship. Because death brought by sin had broken the relationship between God and His children, only life offered could restore it.

The blood of the bull and the goat only symbolized the life, however. In order to offer the blood, the life of the bull and goat had to be ended. Only one could truly offer an unendable life, and that was God Himself.

Because He is Life, Christ is not only the blood spattered on the mercy seat, but the atonement the blood represented. Without the blood, even the High Priest could not approach God or make connection with Him. Without God’s gift of His own unendable life, none of us could approach Him either. The Israelites could not earn reconciliation by perfect law-keeping; in fact, keeping the law was an act of love for a protective father rather than an act of appeal to a vengeful lord. We cannot earn atonement either; our faith is not in our own goodness, but in His loving grace, His offered life. Our obedience is not an attempt to win an argument with a prosecuting lawyer; it is the adoration of a child with his arms around the father’s neck as he is held on the mercy seat itself.

Book Review: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

In my quest to read aloud all of my childhood favorites to my own children, this was the latest challenge. It is a challenging read in many ways, although as a child I simply enjoyed it for the adventure. I had no idea at the time how much my heart was being shaped.

Three unlikely heroes – the children Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin – are summoned to cross time and space in order to save their long-missing father. The villain is evil itself, centralized in a disembodied brain on a far-distant planet, but with shadows that threaten to engulf Earth itself. The children are the only ones capable of rescuing their father, according to the beings of light that summon them, but before they can succeed they must face the potential darkness within themselves and learn to banish it.

Though the language is simple, the lessons for the reader are deep. Love is more rare but stronger than hate. Emotions are only as bad or good as how we use them. Cold logic can be dangerous if misapplied. Confidence and arrogance are not the same thing. Character traits are neither good or bad; their nature depends upon their application. Evil disguises itself as order, safety, equality, and comfort, but truth is always discernable for those willing to look beneath the surface.

My favorite thing about this book is the contextual use of scripture and literary quotes. When Meg doubts her ability to do what is required, the reassurance given is that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things of the mighty.” When Calvin is told where to find the missing father, the hint is given in the form of a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In this very natural way the meanings of some of the deepest principles become plain to children.