Category: God the Father

A Meditation on Common Grace Following Election Day

God causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good

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Families harvesting fruit and vegetables in a colorful rural garden beneath a rainbow

A few days after election day my thoughts are still swirling. Actually not swirling, really, but focusing on things that Jesus said. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his audience to “be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” The context in which Jesus said this is loving our enemies:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'”

Matthew 5:43-48

The illustration Jesus used is the fact that God causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good and his rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. God demonstrates his love for the world that is filled with people in opposition to Him by providing common grace.

Many fellow Christians in this country have been fighting a culture war for decades and trying to take over the U.S. government for Jesus. What they don’t realize is what they will accomplished if they succeed. If they succeed in making the US a Christian nation today, they will change the character of a country.

It will no longer be a country in which there is liberty and justice for all. It will no longer be a country in which all people are protected in the freedom of their conscience, to worship as they choose, and to speak according to their conscience. To make our country a Christian nation means to favor Christianity.

That may seem like a good idea as long as Christians are in power. As long as Christians fight to maintain their power and to prevent a takeover by another group, everything will be fine for us.

In the meantime we establish precedent for might makes right. If it was good for the Christian cause, it will be good for the atheist cause, or the Muslim cause, or the cause of whatever group rises to power and dethrones the Christians.

This dynamic continues to tear apart countries around the world, and it always has. The United States was comparatively a shining city on the hill from the date the wet ink on the Constitution dried. To make this country a Christian country is to ignore the First Amendment of the Constitution that protects all people from the establishment of a state religion and protects the conscience of all people to worship as they individually determine.

To ignore the Constitution is to negate the power of it and to open our country up to the same tribal conflicts that occur in many other nations around the world. Christians who are fighting to make the United States a Christian nation are short-sighted in pursuing that goal and are laying the foundation for our country to be controlled by whatever thought group rises to power.

I believe that the effort also is not biblical. God does not force people to love Him, to honor Him, or even to acknowledge Him in this world. He causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good and sends the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.

God desires that all people “would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.'” (Acts 17:27-28) If He did not want us to have any choice in the matter, He would have programmed us like obedient robots. Of course, then we would not truly love Him.

Instead, He gave us a world in which we are not required to love Him, and that means we can truly love Him for who He is. He became incarnate and sacrificed Himself to show His love for us. Stands at the door and knocks, and all who will open the door He comes into them. The people who reject Him or ignore Him will not be required to spend an eternity with Him – to their sad loss.

If we want a country that demonstrates God’s love to the world, it should be established to protect and promote common grace – liberty to all – the way our Constitution now reads, and we should do nothing to undermine it. We should protect the liberty of every individual to seek God and perhaps find Him, to discover that in Him we live and move and have our being, to love Him for who He is and not because of any law that was passed by a Christian legislature.

It may sound very Christian to take over the U.S. government for Jesus, but it actually isn’t. The Gospel spread steadily over the first three centuries in a hostile Roman government that crucified our Savior. God does not need the U.S. government to protect His sovereignty or His plan of salvation that extends to all the nations. He only needs His children to be faithful for the harvest is great and the workers are few.

What Does it mean to Be Perfect As the Father Is Perfect

What is godly perfection?

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Two people sharing a loaf of bread and drinks at a wooden table

“Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'”


Matthew 19:21 ESV

I read this statement Jesus made in Matthew 19, his statement in the Sermon on the Mount came to mind: “be perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect.” I realized as I looked into it that the context in the Sermon on the Mount in which the statement made is similar. Both texts focus on the Ten Commandments, but Jesus takes them in a direction his audience likely did not anticipate.

In Matthew 19, a wealthy young man had come to him and asked him what good deed must be done to earn eternal life. Jesus responded first by saying that no one is good but for the Father in heaven. Jesus didn’t really answer the question to begin with. He needed to correct an assumption the young man was making, which is that people can be good enough to gain eternal life.

The young man wasn’t catching on, though. The man pressed Jesus further, asking which commandments must be kept to gain eternal life, as if there was some formula that would work. He wanted Jesus to boil it down to the right formula so he could check them off and get on with his life.

So Jesus played along and began to recite the commandments:

“And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother, and, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

Matthew 19:18-19 ESV

Notice that Jesus doesn’t go through all the Ten Commandments. If we are paying attention, we notice that Jesus started in the middle of the Ten Commandments, and he recited only five of them. In fact, he only recited the commandments on the horizontal plane – the commandments focusing on our relationship with others. He skips over the commandments focusing on our relationship with God (love the Lord your God, keep the Sabbath, etc.) I will come back to that in a moment, but I want to see how this passage ties back to the Sermon on the Mount first.

The entirety of the Sermon on the Mount is a reflection on moving from the commandments as a list of rules to a heart attitude toward God and people. Jesus upped the ante on people focused on keeping the commandments. Her repeatedly recited a rule, like you shall not murder, followed by a statement that goes to the heart: if you are angry with your brother, if you have contempt for him, if you call him a fool, you have violated the spirit of the rule, according to Jesus. (Matt. 5:21-22) If you do not commit adultery, that’s great: but if you lust after someone, you have violated the spirit of the rule, according to Jesus.

I think that these two things are going on. First, the real point of the rules is to focus us on the attitude of our hearts. If our hearts are wrong, we have violated the spirit of the rules. The rules are not what God ultimately wants us to master. He wants us to see the attitude of our hearts and recognize that something is amiss.

Second, the rules are intended to show us we don’t measure up. If we think that we are ok because we keep the rules, we are missing the point of the rules – that something is amiss, we don’t measure up, and we need help. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners….” (Mark 2:17)

Actually, both of those points are really the same point, and the truth is that we are all sick (even the Pharisees). We are never going to measure up because something is a mess. We are fallen. We fall short. We need help.

Jesus wrapped up the discourse on keeping the commandments in the Sermon on the Mount by talking about loving our neighbors – and even our enemies. It was in this context that Jesus told us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.

Similarly, Jesus set up the wealthy young man by telling him he lacked something (as if he really had kept all the commandments in the first place): that he should sell all he has, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus. Of course, he went away sad and didn’t hear what else Jesus had to say.

If he had stuck around he might have heard Jesus say things similar to what he said in the Sermon on the Mount. He is not looking for rule followers. He is looking for people whose hearts have the right orientation. It’s not about following the rules; it’s about knowing that God loves us, receiving that love and loving others.

Continue reading “What Does it mean to Be Perfect As the Father Is Perfect” →

The Trajectory of the Bible: from Grace to Grace

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

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Biblical scroll, ritual vessels, and wheat on table

“Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.’ He answered them, ‘And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?'”

Matthew 15:1-3

The tradition Jesus is talking about is the practice of people “devoting to God” that which might otherwise have been used to help to their parents. Honoring your parents was commanded by God, but the religious leaders allowed people not to help their parents if they devoted offerings to the Temple. Giving offerings at the Temple instead of providing for parents is the tradition that Jesus criticized in this passage.

This criticism of the Pharisees came in response to the Pharisees’ criticism of the disciples who did not wash their hands before they ate. Washing hands, like devoting offerings to the Temple instead of honoring parents, exalts religious tradition over what God actually desires of us.

Jesus was not commenting on the propriety of washing hands. We all know that washing our hands is a good thing. We wash off bacteria and other things that can cause illness. Cleanliness is a good thing, but Jesus is not commenting on cleanliness. He is commenting on the hypocrisy of exalting form (tradition) over substance. Quoting Isaiah, Jesus concluded:

“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'”


Matthew 15:8-9 ESV

Throughout the ministry of Jesus, he consistently focuses on the importance of what is going on in our hearts. He prioritizes our hearts and our motivations over the things that we say and do, especially the religious things that make us look good to other people. Thus, Jesus concluded this encounter by telling the crowd:

“What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

Matthew 15:11

He isn’t saying that we can do whatever we want as long as our heart is pure. He is saying that the wrong things that we do and say proceed from the defilement in our hearts. Even doing the right things with the wrong heart is wrong. The root of our sin is not in the things that we say or do, but in our heart. The sinful things we say and do proceed from our sinful hearts.

Even if we do things that are right or seem right are wrong if we do them with impure hearts. For instance, when we say or do things because we want other people to hear or see them and think well of us, we are missing the mark.

I am thinking about these things because I have been continually impressed lately about the importance of the trajectory of the Bible. The trajectory of the Bible is important because we can mistake the Bible for a code of law – a book of rules – if we are not paying attention to what I call the trajectory of the Bible. The emphasis Jesus placed on the heart over the things that we say and do is an example of that trajectory.

Continue reading “The Trajectory of the Bible: from Grace to Grace” →

Reflections on Praying, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth As It Is In Heaven”

Intellectual faith vs. doing faith

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Neighbors cleaning a sunlit city street together

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray he taught them to recognize God: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Immediately after recognizing God for who He is, Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” These things are the foundation of our prayer life with God, according to Jesus.

As I think about this today, the realization strikes me that praying, “Thy kingdom come,” needs to be accompanied by a willingness to reflect God’s kingdom and God’s will in the way we live. If we pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven and don’t think that prayer means anything for us in the way that we live, do we really mean it?

These thoughts came to me as I was worshipping God and thinking about the song we were singing, which was an expression of faith in the promises of God. If we

pray or sing these words to God without any intention to reflect the God we are worshiping and praying to in our daily lives, is our worship and prayer anything other than a clanging gong or a banging cymbal that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13?

When Jesus began his public ministry, the message he preached was the coming of the kingdom, which he said is near at hand. (Mk. 1:14-15l Matt. 4:17, 23) Jesus said that the reason he was sent was to preach the coming of the kingdom of God. (Luke 4:3)

When Jesus spoke in his hometown synagogue, he said it a little bit differently: he said that he came to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom to prisoners, to give sight to the blind, and to set the oppressed free. (Luke 4:18-19)

Throughout his public ministry Jesus demonstrated what he came to do. He touched lepers, though doing so would make him unclean under Jewish law, and he healed them. He gave sight to the blind. He healed the sick and the lame. He set people free from demonic influences. He forgave sins. He lived out a tangible demonstration of what it means for the kingdom of God to come, and he extended God’s favor to Samaritans, a Canaanite woman, and a Roman centurion.

He also challenged the religious people of his day. He repeatedly healed people on the Sabbath. He even went right into the synagogues and healed them in front of the religious leaders, knowing that it would provoke them in their religiosity, because they didn’t understand what it means for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

The religious leaders were angry when Jesus challenged their understanding of the law and therefore of God. In their best moments they were just confused.

When Jesus healed ten lepers and instructed them to go show themselves to the priests, only the Samaritan leper came back and thanked Jesus. The priests asked, when would this kingdom that Jesus was preaching come? Jesus said, God’s kingdom isn’t any particular place, because God’s kingdom is within us. (ἐντός (entos), meaning inside (us) (adverb or noun) — within (us), sometimes translated “among us” or “in our midst”)

They still didn’t know what he meant. All they could see was that he was breaking the rules – the requirements they had established to protect people from breaking the mosaic Law of not working on the Sabbath. They didn’t understand that the Lord of the Sabbath was standing in front of them, telling them they were getting it wrong.

Jesus said the kingdom is in the midst of His followers. He come to announce that God’s kingdom has come, though it is also still to come. He introduced his kingdom, and he called his followers to recognize it, to repent, and to live in its reality.

The question I want to ask today of myself and anyone who might be reading this is this: Are we doing that?

Continue reading “Reflections on Praying, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth As It Is In Heaven”” →

The Lessons from Elisha: Foreshadowing Jesus

An examination of the differences between Elijah and Elisha

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Man in traditional robes sitting on a rock, covering face with hands, historic city with ancient buildings and Dome of the Rock in background at sunset

The contrast between the ministries of Elijah and Elisha provides insight that carries into the coming of the Messiah, the ministry of Jesus, and the New Covenant. The contrast between Elijah and Elisha is a contrast between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. It is a contrast between an emphasis on the judgment of God and an emphasis on the grace of God and salvation.

In my ignorance, Elijah previously stood out more to me than Elisha, even though Elisha famously asked for and received a double portion of the spirit Elijah had. The spirit of Elijah passes to Elisha as seen in the miracles each of them performs. Scholars often highlight the fourteen miracles performed by Elisha versus the seven miracles performed by Elijah as an example of the double portion, but the differences between Elijah and Elisha go much deeper than that.

The character of the miracles is different. This is something I might not have noticed but for a focus on the details in the story of Elijah over the last few years. Those details led me to see some lessons from the story of Elijah that do not stand out at first blush.

Elijah was an oppositional prophet. He was the antagonist to Ahab and Jezebel. He challenged the prophets of Baal and smoked them in a fiery display of God’s power over the impotent idol (Baal) that Ahab and Jezebel worshipped.

Elijah had all the prophets of Baal slaughtered, but Jezebel was not impressed. She called for Elijah’s head, and he fled in fear. He sulked in self-absorbed pity. He complained to God that he was the only one who was faithful, and he seemed to come close to finding fault even with God for the anti-climactic outcome.

When God tried to show Elijah that God was not in great displays of power like wind, fire, and earthquake, Elijah seemed incapable or unwilling to acknowledge what God was saying. Twice God asked why Elijah ran away to Mount Sinai. Twice Elijah gave God the exact same answer.

A man in a brown cloak entering a rocky cave surrounded by moss and vegetation

Elijah protested to God that he had been zealous, and he insisted that he, alone, was faithful to God in all of Israel…. But clearly, he was not alone. Multiple times the text tells us that Obadiah was faithful; he saved 100 prophets from Jezebel’s decree of capital punishment; and God found 7000 people left who had not bowed to Baal.

Elijah seemed not just disappointed, but upset (with God?) that judgment had not rained down on Ahab and Jezebel and all of Israel. It wasn’t that judgment didn’t loom over their heads; it was that God controls the timing – not Elijah.

God told Elijah to go back and anoint Hazael king of Aram and Jehu king of Israel and to pass his mantle to Elisha. Elijah passed the mantle to Elisha but he never followed through with the other instructions God gave him.

Elijah continued in ministry even after he passed his mantle to Elisha, but he seems to take a back seat to other prophets, and he did not change his attitude. God told him to meet the messengers of the King of Israel to deliver a message. After they delivered the message to the king, the king sent them back to summon Elijah, but he smoked them by calling down fire. The king sent another envoy of messengers, and Elijah smoked them with fire also – killing 50 people at a time.

Though God told Elijah to confront the king’s messengers with his own message, the text is conspicuously silent about Elijah calling down fire on the envoys who came to summon him. The King sent a third group of messengers to summon Elijah, and this time God told him to go with them.

Now that I have spent some time meditating on the stories of the two prophets, Elijah stands out for his brashness, but Elisha stands out as the prophet who is more true to who God is. He is the one whose ministry is more characteristic of God, and his ministry stands out in the way way it bridges the narrative arc of Scripture between Old Covenant and New Covenant, from a focus on Abraham’s descendants to all the nations, from the Law of Moses to the Law of grace, love and Christ.

Elisha signals the change from the old covenant to the new covenant. Elisha points the the direction that the arc and sweep of Scripture will take us. Elisha is the link in this point in the narrative to God’s ultimate plans and purposes in the world.

Continue reading “The Lessons from Elisha: Foreshadowing Jesus” →