Category: Christian

What Does It Mean to Be Known By God

What does it mean that the Lord knows the way of the righteous?

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“Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Psalm 1:5‭-‬6 ESV

What does this mean? The Lord knows the way of the righteous. Doesn’t God know everything? Doesn’t God know the way of the wicked also?

God sees everything, and He knows everything. God numbered the stars. (Ps. 147:4) God doesn’t just number the stars; He knows each star by its own name! (Is. 40:26) He can count every hair on every person’s head. (Luke 12:7)

God knows our thoughts, our paths and our ways, and He even knows the words we speak before we say them. (Ps. 139:2-4) Why does Psalm 1 say God knows the way of the righteous (and not the wicked also)?

He certainly knows the way of the wicked. Nothing is hidden from God. (Luke 8:17 & Heb. 4:13) The statement that God knows the way of the righteous doesn’t necessarily mean that He doesn’t know the way of the unrighteous. I think He certainly does.

This passage is not talking about bare knowledge. Clearly God is all knowing. This is not a statement contrary to the omniscience of God. God must know the way of the wicked to judge them, which this verse says He will do.

This statement is about a different kind of knowing. It is a statement of familiarity and identification. God is familiar with and identifies with the righteous because the righteous have adopted God’s ways. God knows them in the sense that he knows his own ways. 

It is a statement of intimacy. God is intimate with the righteous. The righteous turn to God in good times and bad. They have opened themselves to God, and God knows them as someone knows a confidant.

It is a statement of connection. God connects with the righteous. The righteous are aligned with God in their ways. Thus, God knows them. Jesus prayed that we would be one with him as he is one with the Father. (John 17:20-23) God establishes connection with the righteous.

What connection does this knowledge have with judgment, perishing, or eternal life? (Which is the focus of the majority of this passage ) God’s knowing is somehow tied into the judgment, the wicked perishing, and implicitly the righteous not being judged and not perishing.

God is eternal. He always is, always was, and always will be. If we are aligned with God, connected with God, we partake with God in his eternal life through Christ. This was the good news (Gospel) that Jesus preached.

Abraham was counted righteous by the grace of God because of his faith (trust and commitment to God). Through Abraham’s seed came Jesus, his seed, who blessed all the nations of the earth.

In Jesus was God incarnate, emptying Himself of His glory and privilege (Phil. 2:5-7) to “connect with” us on our level. In Jesus, God demonstrated His love and character for us to see and connect with. (1 Jn. 1:2)

That blessing God promised to Abraham is the right to be called sons of God (Jn.1:12), to be born again (Jn. 1:13 & Jn. 3:3-8), to die with Christ and to live eternally in him in connection with the Father. (Rom. 6:6-8)

I think of Paul’s great words, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12) These are words of intimacy and personal connection. “Then we shall see face to face.” (Id.) This was God’s desire and his plan all along that we might have personal intimate connection with him and He with us.

God not only desires to “know” us – to have intimate connection with us; He desires to be known by us!

God the Father can seem distant and unapproachable. but He became one of us to connect with us and invite us to connect with Him in the form of Jesus. Jesus, in turn, leaves us the Holy Spirit, who is God who remains with us in intimate form who connect with us, and provides a way for us to connect with Him.

The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised…. (Eph. 1:14)

[He] has given us the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the guarantee of all that he has in store for us. (2 Cor. 1:22)

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…. (Rom. 8:16)

The Vital Importance of Encounter with God

Job’s questions didn’t matter anymore after God showed up!

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Francis Chan said in a recent interview that many people walk away [from Christianity, faith, religion] because they have never really had an encounter with God. They walk away from their belief system or their parent’s belief system because they have had no personal encounter with the divine.

“If you really encounter God”, he says, “You don’t do that.” Moses didn’t walk off Mount Sinai arguing about a belief system. Job didn’t return to his belief system or his parents’ belief system. They had real encounters with God, and those encounters changed them.

I have thought for several years about the odd fact that Job had a million questions for God until God appeared. When God showed up, He didn’t provide a single answer to any of Job’s questions, but Job no longer had any questions!

Job’s questions didn’t matter anymore after God showed up!

When Job demanded answers, he wasn’t looking for a belief system. He was desperately seeking an encounter with God, though he might not have known it at the time. If Job had settled for a belief system (or a systematic theology as we might call it), his questions may have been answered, but his doubts would have continued.

People will argue about belief systems, but we don’t argue about an encounter with God. You might not understand my encounter with God, but you can’t refute it. You might question my experience, but I know what I know.

Belief systems don’t change people. Encounters with God change people. A belief system is not the crux of Christianity. If we think it’s all about having a systematic theology, we are missing the forest for the trees; we are accepting a shadow of the real thing. The real thing is God, Himself!

Francis Chan ended his train of thought with the words of Isaiah in 29:13:

“[T]hese people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men….” 

Christianity has no life or vitality if it is nothing more than a commandment taught by men. The essence of Christianity is Jesus. Jesus is God who became man. Jesus said,

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:0)

We do not know God if we have never encountered Him. Mental ascent is not the same thing as knowing God through encounter with Him!

Jesus urged people to seek God. He didn’t urge people to seek to know about God. He urged people to seek to know God, personally. He urged them to seek God, the Person!

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He didn’t say, “I can show you the way”; or “I can teach you the truth”; or “I can give you the life”. He said, “I AM the way, the truth and the life!”

The way, the truth and the life resides in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is one with the Father, and He left behind the Holy Spirit, who is also one with God the Father and who accessible to us, that we might know God intimately and personally.

We settle far too often for mere knowledge and belief systems. What we need is encounter and relationship with the Living God. What we need is the Living Water and Living Bread, which is God, Himself.

What Does the Church Have to Do with Judging Outsiders? Politics, the Gospel and Whose Side Is God On?

Paul said, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?”

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Paul said, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?” (1 Cor. 5:12) This is where my mind went when I watched An (Un)Civil War: The Evangelical Divide posted online recently by CBS News. In the next moment, I was asking question Joshua asked the commander of the army of the Lord: “Are you for us or for our enemies?” (Joshua 5:13)

If you know the Lord’s answer to Joshua’s question, think about it for a moment. The subject here is the modern form of evangelicalism that is highlighted in the CBS piece linked above: hyper patriotic, nationalistic and political. I will come back to the Lord’s response to Joshua before I conclude. (You can read the passage now if you are too curious to wait.)

I hardly watch the news anymore, and CBS is certainly not my “go to” news source. I don’t have one. The portions of the CBS piece that are ringing in my head are the clips of the evangelical leaders preaching and explaining themselves in their own words.

I do understand that these clips are selected and don’t represent all that these leaders stand for or all that they might say. What they reveal, though, is enough to move me to write.

The clips show various preachers unapologetically “speaking the truth” from the pulpit, which the commentator calls “sermonizing a brand of social conservatism defined by conspiracy and apocalyptic rhetoric”. The words of the commentator are not what catch my attention, but they should be noted for the way they are perceived.

The piece focuses on what is described as a “power struggle” in evangelical circles. That is how the world sees the difference in opinions by evangelicals: a power struggle inside Christianity “at war within itself”.

One firebrand pastor (Greg Locke) touts the amount of support for his position, seeming to affirm the perception that it’s all about power and influence. In the world of politics, the number of evangelical constituents (over 1 in 4 Americans) is a matter of power and influence to political pundits. Locke’s comment and the concern expressed in the media piece align on that basis.

(I question whether 1 in 4 Americans are really evangelicals in the way I and most people of genuine faith define evangelicals. The statistic is a political one, not a religious one, but that is a topic for another day.)

One pastor is heard saying, “But we shouldn’t talk politics in religion. Says who? Satan?! That’s the only way they control us!”, he says. “To get us to be silent.”  

Indeed, power, influence, and control are at the center of this phenomenon. At the same time, Locke claims that the Bible is the issue, “Here is what the Bible says. Boom! We’re going to go with it!”

Locke views himself as fighting for the Bible, fighting for ‘God and country”, trying to wrestle the United States out of the grip of the left and Satan. But, is that really what is going on? What about the Bible?

Are they actually preaching what the Bible says?

There is so much to be said here, but I want to focus on just three things: 1) what the Bible says; 2) what the message of the Gospel is; and 3) whose side God is on in this struggle.

Continue reading “What Does the Church Have to Do with Judging Outsiders? Politics, the Gospel and Whose Side Is God On?” →

What Did Jesus Mean When He Said We Should Give to God the Things that Are God’s?

Having been created in the image of God, we bear the imprint of God, but we must still offer ourselves back to God if we are to be aligned with God.

kevingdrendel6 Comments
The creation of Adam – Vatican Sistine Chapel in Rome, Italy. Created by Michelangelo Buonarroti.

I took some interest in a Facebook post at Bible Archaeology[1] about the image of Tiberius Caesar on a Roman coin like the one Jesus referenced in Matthew 22:15-22.[2] Some scriptural references and back ground facts are the subject of my writing today.

The story is well-known. Some Jewish leaders challenged Jesus with the question, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”

It was a ruse. They were trying put Jesus into the impossible position of aligning either with the Jews (against the Romans) or with the Romans (against the Jews) on the issue of paying taxes.

Jesus famously asked for a coin, and then he asked whose image was imprinted on the coin. It was Caesar’s image, of course. Then Jesus said, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Perhaps, my interest was piqued because I have written about the story before. I talk about rendering unto Caesar in the context of how Christians should respond to secular authority.[3] I wrote about Jordan Peterson’s comment, crediting the words of Jesus to the creation of the modern principal of the separation of church and state.[4] But I haven’t focused on what it is we are to “render” to God.

I am always excited to learn something new, and the Bible Archaeology post added some details I didn’t know. The first details provide the backstory to the story, which involves Judas the Galilean. The interrelationship of the two stories shows how intertwined, complex, nuanced and harmonious Scripture is within itself and with external facts discovered through historical and archaeological sources, among other things.

I appreciate the historians and archaeologists, like Bible Archaeology, that dig up corroborating details. In the Facebook post, they cite additional scriptural passages on Judas the Galilean that give us insight into why the Pharisees in Galilee challenged Jesus on the issue of paying taxes.

Continue reading “What Did Jesus Mean When He Said We Should Give to God the Things that Are God’s?” →

The God Abraham Believed In

Abraham believed in a transcendent God at a time when people still made gods of wood and stone.

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I have been busy of late (what else is new?), so I haven’t written much, though I always have thoughts swirling in my head that I would like to get “down on paper”. Today, I have just a short thread I want to get out of my head.

Paul speaks of the God Abraham believed in as the God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Romans 4:17 ESV)

Many are the gods that people have believed in since time immemorial. From gods made of wood and stone, to trees, mountains, the sun and other natural objects, to the pantheons of Greek and Roman gods, the number of gods people have believed in are legion.

Today, Hindus still have a panoply of gods, and pagans still worship objects of nature (or simply nature, itself). Christians and Muslims have whittled the legion down to one, and atheists believe in, simply, one less God than they. Other than the atheists of the world, most of humanity believes in something transcendent that is labeled divine.

The human drive is to attempt to discern the transcendent. Most agnostic believe that something transcends the natural worlds, though they won’t dare to divine what it is. Even some atheists hold out some form of believe in transcendence, even if they ultimately determine it is illusory. They acknowledge, like Stephen Hawking did, that it is helpful to believe it.

There is mystery in the transcendence we sense breaking into the world. There is intrigue. There is anticipation, and there is hope in the sense of transcendence that lingers often on the blurry edges of our mundane existence, sneaking into it at times leaving us breathless and wondering.

I often allude the curious statement in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that God put eternity in the hearts of men:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (NIV)

If God didn’t put a yearning for transcendence into the human heart, where does it come from? I believe that is a rhetorical question.

For many, the idea of a transcendent being or reality is just too much to grasp. It is surrounded by too much uncertainty and requires too much strain and effort to attain even a dark understanding of it that they determine the simpler, easier and preferable course is to remain agnostic or to dismiss the idea of transcendence altogether.

Others have taken the leap to embrace one understanding or another and have committed themselves to that understanding. Thus, the legions of gods that have existed in the constructs of human thought. And that might just be what all or most of them are – constructs of human thought, attempts at putting a “face” on the transcendence we sense in he universe.

One man, Abraham, believed in a God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” This was a God above all gods. This was a God who spoke the universe into existence.

This was a God who Paul and other first century Judeans believed entered into the world He created in the form of a created being in whom He imprinted His own image. God could enter that being because He created room for Himself in that being. The writer of Hebrews says:

“[Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…. (Heb. 1:3)

In very recent times, our best scientists have determined that the universe had a beginning. It came into existence a finite time ago. Stephen Hawking demonstrated the necessity of “singularity” (a beginning) mathematically.

The trio of Arvind Borde, Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin determined mathematically that any universe that is expanding had a beginning (a singularity) a finite time ago. Thus, a point of singularity, a beginning, would apply to any number of multiverses.

The fact that our universe, and any universe like ours that exists or could possibly exist, had a beginning a finite time ago raises the specter of the transcendent – a Beginner who initiated our universe into existence.

This is the God Abraham believed (a God who “calls into existence the things that do not exist”) in at a time when people were still making gods out of wood and stone. Though the entire world he knew thought they could conjure up and appease gods they made, Abraham believed in the kind of God that is utterly transcendent and which could create a universe out of nothing by speaking it into existence.

Abraham also believed in a God who could raise dead things to life. Paul in the first century, and all the followers of the man, Jesus, claimed that Jesus is the vindication of that belief. That Jesus was God who became man – emptying Himself (Phil. 2:7) to take on the form of a being (man) who God created in His image. (Thus, it was a good fit!)

That man demonstrated the character of God for us in the way he lived out his life. He reflected God’s love for us by his willingness to give his own life for us. He gave us the ultimate, transcendent hope by rising from the dead in that same body and inviting us to follow him.

Now, Paul says, we only have a partial understanding of that God who would stoop to come to us and demonstrate His love for us, but there will come a day when we shall know as we are fully known:

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”              (1 Corinthians 13:12)

We yearn for Him because of the eternity that He set in our hearts, and we have some understanding of him because of His image that He placed in us. We can put a “face” to God in the life of Jesus, and we have hope that we will see Him “face to face” because of the resurrection of Jesus in human body he inhabited.

He holds out the promise to all of us that He made through Abraham thousands of years ago – a promise that Abraham could not even articulate other than to say that, through him and his descendants, God would bless all the people of the earth.

And Jesus left for us the Holy Spirit, which is God in the form of Spirit who is available to come into and reside in each one of us (John 14:15-21) who have invited Him in to reside with us to bear witness with our spirits that we are children of God. (Romans 8:16)

These things characterize the God of Abraham who was revealed more completely through the incarnation of Jesus. These things set one conception of God apart from all other conceptions of gods, and even the conceptions of one god that remains aloof. The hope of the God of Abraham is Christ in us!

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together…. [and he is] Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:15-17, 26)