Category: grace

What Is God’s Love Like?

Who is this God who is love? Who are we in relation to Him?

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Stairwell in Syria by Steve Murray
Stairwell in Syria by Steve Murray

I recently began reading The Forgotten Way, by Ted Dekker, and the book has been an eye opener. By that I don’t mean that have learned anything new. Rather, I am sensing, glimpsing something that I have not quite grasped yet about what I already know but don’t really know.

Ted Dekker describes his own journey in this knowing in the book. Here is part of the story of his journey:

There in my office, drowning in a sea of self-condemnation and unworthiness, a gentle question whispered through my mind

                Does your Father not love you with the same love that He asks you to love others?

The room was utterly still. I blinked, unable to comprehend.

What is love? The voice asked.

But I knew, of course. Love was a staggering concept that held no record of wrong and was kind in the face of cruelty. When the evil man attacked, love turned the other cheek without offering blame or grievance. This is the love no one knows – the same love Jesus talked about often.

                Does your Father not love you with the same love that He asks you to love others?

I sat in my chair, stunned, unable to accept the implication that anyone could possibly love me in such a way. I had never thought to ask if God loved me in the same way He asks me to love others.

Then I heard another thought, like a voice but not a voice at the same time.

                Let go of all you think you know about Me, so that you can KNOW Me.

Translation: let go of your intellectual knowing so that you can experience my love (to know in a biblical sense).

As a deeply philosophical thinker trained in theology, deeply dependent on logic and intellect, this invitation should have frightened me. Instead, I began to weep with gratitude at such an intimate offer.

You mean I don’t have to figure this all out?

                Has doing so ever led you to this kind of love?

No.

                Taste Me and see that I am good. I am love. I am Father.

I didn’t hesitate. Nothing else mattered to me in that moment, because if it was true that God was this kind of loving Father, I would throw myself off a cliff to fall at His feet in gratitude for such an extravagant love.

And so I did. There, in the night, I closed my eyes, let go of who I thought I was and who the Father was, stepped off a kind of cliff, and I free-fell into that space beyond mere intellect where faith and love are found.

This was my surrender, you see? I let go of my own fear of not having it all figured out; my fear of not having all the right doctrines and beliefs; my fear of not being accepted unless I measured up to the demands of a holy God. I let go of all of that and fell into the arms of trust and love.

It felt like falling into a great unseen mystery, but I was actually falling into the light. I was falling out of a prison – a darkness that had been deepened by my own attempts to make my own light through reason and striving.

As the light filled my awareness, I began to awaken to a whole new reality.

It was then that I began to know my Father intimately in the way Jesus talked about knowing the Father – a word used for a deep intimidate experience between a man and a woman. It was that kind of knowing, not an intellectual knowledge that swallowed me.

There, I trembled at his goodness , because He is infinitely good and complete and could never, never, never be compromised by anything anyone did or thought. Ever.

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How Can God Judge Good People: Approaching the Solution

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(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

One of the nagging problems that people have with the Bible is the notion that God will judge people that we might consider good (as in better than me). That does not sit well with me, of course. Because we do not fully understand the issue, we fire off the accusatory question: if God is good and loving, how can He condemn good people to hell?

Part of the problem with the question is that we may not accurately understand the problem. The Law (morality) was not given to us so that we might measure up to it; the Law was given to us to show us that we do not measure up! In fact, the very point is that we do not measure up, and we cannot measure up.

Goodness and badness are not really the point; moral standards, the Law, only expose the problem. A moral standard is completely incapable of accomplishing what we need; it only reveals that we need help.

Thus, when the Pharisees boasted of their good actions, Jesus raised the ante: He said that even thinking bad thoughts is sin! When the rich young ruler asked what he needed to do to be saved, Jesus told him to go sell everything – something Jesus knew he could (would not be willing) to do. The point of the Law is to bring us to the realization that we cannot measure up on our own.

If we are trying to measure up and “be good” in order to get to Heaven, we have failed to understand the problem. We cannot even begin to understand the solution if we fail to understand the problem.

The problem is that we are set against God in our sinfulness. Our nature is set against God’s nature. While everything else in the universe was created to be finely-tuned as God intended, by the choice God gave us, we deviated from plan. This choice gave us the possibility of having a relationship with God, our Creator, but it also set us up for corruption as we inevitably would go our own way, being imperfect creatures, and not gods (let alone God).

We wanted to be like God and, so, became opposed to Him. In this way, we introduced corruption (sin) into the world that resulted in death (and all that leads to death – decay, degeneration, disease, etc.)

Transformation is what we require to be able to have fellowship with God and to enter in to His Heaven. But, we cannot achieve that transformation ourselves. In fact, we are completely incapable of it on our own.

Continue reading “How Can God Judge Good People: Approaching the Solution” →

Love of God and Wrath of God though the Filter of Human Experience

If we draw near to God, we experience His love and His grace. When we move away from God, we do not feel His love or grace, because there is no love apart from God.

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by Treasure Noel Tatum
photo by Treasure Noel Tatum

This is the fourth segment in the series, Putting the Wrath of God in Perspective, beginning with Warming Up to the Wrath of God, then moving to The Wrath of God in History, and then to The Wrath of God and Eternity.

The idea of the “wrath of God” comes with a certain amount of discomfort, but we should never be afraid to confront the most difficult questions or statements. Truth is truth, and God and truth must necessarily be harmonious. Richard Dawkins says,

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

The angry God of the Old Testament problem is often a line of first defense (or is it offense?) for those who do not believe in God, or at least do not believe in “the God of the bible”. It is a problem that believers wrestle with too.

The sermon in church today was on the book of Ezra. Ezra 8:22 reads,

“The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger is against all who forsake him.”

This is the kind of thing that people like Richard Dawkins criticize, but they do so without any understanding (and likely with no desire to understand) what they are criticizing. Continue reading “Love of God and Wrath of God though the Filter of Human Experience” →

Stepping Into the Light

If we step into the light, our condition is exposed. But, that is where we find truth; that is where we find God

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Psalm 139 is a favorite of mine. It can be very comforting knowing that God is intimately familiar with me. He knows my struggles, my good intentions, what I long for and what I need.

You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.

(Psalm 139:1-4) On the other hand, God knows my demons, my sinful thoughts, my envious, hateful, spiteful and selfish thoughts. He not only sees the good things I do and think (that I want others to know); He sees the bad things I do and think (that I want no one to see). The idea that God knows me so well – even better than I know myself – is both a wonderful and a fearful thing!

The amazing thing is that He loves me. He knows me intimately – better than I know myself. and He loves me.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence

(Psalm 139:7) King David’s question is rhetorical of course. The answer is clearly nowhere. Nowhere can I go that God is not present. David takes comfort in that thought.

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.

(Psalm 139:8-10) That knowledge is as unnerving as it is comforting. Nowhere can I go that God is not present and nothing can I do, or even think, that God does not know it. David knew this full well. He learned it intimately through experience.

After he was tempted and succumbed to that temptation, seeing Bathsheba from his roof top, inviting her into his home and lying with her, and then plotting to send her husband to his death to cover up the misdeed, David was called to account by God in dramatic fashion. David’s sin was laid bare. He was completely undone by it. So, David knew well these words:

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

(Psalm 139:11-12) When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, their first reaction was to hide themselves from God. People have been hiding from God ever since to this day. Hiding from God is as futile an exercise as it is foolish. God knows every hair on our heads and every thought that runs through our heads. He surely knows every action that we take. There is nothing hidden from God.

Continue reading “Stepping Into the Light” →