Category: Love

The Way of Righteousness and the Holy Command: the Holy Command

We escape the corruption of the world by the way of righteousness and the sacred command. But, what if we lose the way and don’t know the sacred commandment?

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I started this short series with a passage from 2 Peter 2:20-21:

If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.

They “they” who escaped the corruption of the world only to be entangled in it again are the false prophets Peter accuses at the beginning of the chapter of introducing “destructive heresies” and “denying the sovereign Lord who bought them.” (2 Pet. 2:1) Peter says these false prophets are like dogs returning to their vomit. (v. 22) Seducing the unstable (v. 14) and appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice “people who are just escaping from those who live in error.” (v. 18)

In the introductory article, I note that the words of judgment Peter unleashes on these false prophets might lead to a concern that we could one of those unstable ones who are enticed and entrapped. Those who struggle with sins that so easily entangle us might easily feel condemned in this tirade.

The solemn warning that such ones are better off not knowing Jesus. than knowing the way of righteousness and turning their back on the sacred command is enough to send a shiver down the spine. The actions Peter describes, however, are the fruits of turning away from the sacred command. These fruits are not the problems in themselves, but the symptoms of disconnecting from the way of righteousness and the sacred command.

In the second article, I explored the way of righteousness. The way of righteousness is the way of Jesus, who is the Way! Knowing Jesus and knowing the way of righteousness is the same thing.

The way of righteousness means embracing and walking in light of his sacrifice on the cross by which we are justified and we are considered righteous before God the Father. It means trusting in Jesus and the grace of God the Father. It means ceasing from our striving to earn the way and the pride that goes with our achievement.

The way of righteousness means following Jesus and maintaining relationship with Jesus, who is our Living Water, our Bread of Life, and the Vine in which we have become the branches (extensions of him). Knowing the way of righteousness and turning from the sacred command is to disconnect and to go our own way.

But what is the sacred command? This was my big question as I read through this passage recently, and this question is ultimately what motives me to write this short series.

I admit, that I wasn’t sure as I read through this passage. I should have known, because Jesus was pretty clear about it. But, I didn’t. I had lost sight of it. It’s so easy to lose sight of what’s important in the turmoil in the world that often spills over into my own heart.

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Fruit, Love and False Prophets

It’s a sad state of affairs that Christians today may be more well known for their fighting with each other than for their love for each other. 

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Someone commented recently on Facebook that some of the harshest critics of Christians on social media are Christians. (Assuming that anyone who self-identifies as a Christian is a Christian.) This reminded me of what Jesus said to his disciples after Judas left the last supper to betray him.

When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 13:31-35

“Now” the Son of Man is glorified, Jesus said. He was lifted up, but it wasn’t the kind of “glory” anyone expected. It was the glory of Jesus being obedient to the Father and accomplishing all that intended.

Jesus knew he was leaving, and (if we read between the lines), he knew the disciples left in front of him would struggle at first. What was the key instruction in this time? What was the one thing he gave them to hold onto?

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

It’s a sad state of affairs that Christians today may be more well known for their fighting with each other than for their love for each other. 

People will say that the doctrine is important and that Paul and the early church were also concerned about doctrine. This is true, of course.

It also occurs to me that the 1st century Christians lived in a world that was predominantly non-Christian. They were a very small minority. The disagreements among Christians likely went completely unnoticed by the world at large.

Christians are in the majority in the United States today, so negativity from Christians toward Christians in the United states is highly noticeable. With so many people who call themselves Christian, the fighting is going to get noticed.

A person might say further that love is tempered by truth. Love that does not recognize and confirm to truth is not love. Right? I cannot help but thinking, however, that such a statement sounds particularly like something a Pharisee may have said in the 1st century.

Isn’t it a shame that, with so many Christians in this country, we do not shine like that proverbial city on a hill? And, by shine, I mean with the love of God for each other (and for others – and even for our enemies).

Looking back at the first Christian leaders who had disagreements, I see that they spent time in prayer – together with each other. They worked to find common ground, and they agreed to disagree on peripheral things. They did not bicker publicly among themselves.

We see many examples of this in the Book of Acts and the epistles that make up the New Testament. Early Christians did not agree on everything, but they agreed on essentials, and they allowed room for disagreement.

Early Christians did take a strong stand against heresy, but we can’t just everything on which we disagree matters of heresy. Heretical doctrines in the 1st Century, like Gnosticism, have their 21st Century counterparts. We call certain clear departures from orthodox Christianity heretical, like the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons, but the fighting my friend on Facebook was sad about is fighting among Christians who are somewhere in the range of Christian “orthodoxy”.

That is the rub.

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What Business Do We Have Judging the World?

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The title to this blog article is a question that doesn’t come from me. It comes from Paul, the Apostle. The question is rhetorical, meaning that Paul assumed his audience would know the answer, though he doesn’t leave them guessing. He provides the answer.

His audience was the Corinthian church in the 50’s AD. The larger context in which Paul asked this rhetorical question is also instructive. This is that context in which Paul asks the question:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

1 Corintihans 5:9-11 (emphasis added)

Then Paul asks the question,

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.  

1 Corinthians 5:12 (emphasis added)

I am reminded of this passage today because of a comment posted by someone on Facebook about how we should treat people who seem to be “acting against God.” The poster expressed the opinion that something should be done by Christians about the “open immorality … being accepted in society.”

I don’t want to suggest that biblical morality should not instruct how Christians vote and engage politically in the world, but Paul’s question about judging the world should affect how we interact with the world in politics and other ways. At the same time, we need to know how to model Paul’s instruction not to judge those outside the church.

Christians are often accused of “forcing their religion” or morality on others. Simply voting and engaging politically based on biblical values is not forcing religion or morality on others any more than others voting and engaging politically based on their own values is forcing their views on us. We can vote our consciences without judging.

This is where we may need some nuance, however, as some Christians seem to think they have a biblical obligation or mandate to make the world conform to a biblical morality. I have to admit that I have shared this confusion in my past until I began to take seriously what Paul said to the Corinthians in the passage quoted above.

Judging by Paul’s words, I used to view this exactly backward! I judged the world by biblical morality, but I often gave myself and fellow Christians a pass when it came to strict adherence to righteous behavior. After all, we are saved by our faith and not be works, right? If I mess up, I can confess it and be forgiven – even as I demand that the world acknowledge and follow the law.

As I meditate on Paul’s words, I see that Paul’s instruction aligns with what Jesus said about judging. I think you will see that as I unpack what Paul and Jesus said and try to work out why they said it and what it might mean for us in the way we conduct ourselves in the world.

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Comments on Why God Became Incarnate and Died for Our Sins

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Daniel Mann does a good job of explaining Why Christ, as God Incarnate, Had to Die for Our Sins. In reading his explanation, my mind goes to statements like God’s “transcendent love” and “total abhorrence for sin”, God’s “righteousness” and “divine forbearance” for sin, and the price that had to be paid “to satisfy God’s righteous character”.

Daniel describes his own reaction to these concepts formerly, as a non-Christian. He felt God was a “deceiving sadist” until one day he realized that Jesus was God incarnate, that God did not merely sacrifice a created being – God sacrificed Himself in human form!

Indeed, that is the central point of Christian belief, which is described beautifully and poignantly in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:5-8):

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature [form of] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature [form] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

These things would be small consolation, also, if not for the victory on the other side of the cross (Phil. 2:9-11)

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

That Jesus was fully man and fully God incarnated into a man is key to the understanding of Christianity. That God is three “persons” in one is also key, as it provides some explanation how God can incarnate Himself into the form of a man and die (in human flesh), though God remains self-existent and eternal, the Creator (and not a created being).

Not that there is no mystery in this. I concede this is hard for creatures who are limited dimensionally to wrap our heads around these ideas.

Finally, it explains how (and why) death to Jesus in the flesh had no power over him. As God incarnate, death “could not hold him”. (Acts 2:24)

But, I am not writing to clarify these aspects of Christian doctrine. I want to focus on Daniel Mann’s personal revelation that Jesus was God incarnate, and his death was voluntary – God sacrificing Himself, and not God sacrificing some created being.

This realization made all the difference for him. When he really understood this distinction, he began to see the love of God that was demonstrated in that act of self-sacrifice – something God did not have to to, but He did it for us because He loves us.

Other people, I know, are not convinced. Indeed, if a person understands Jesus to be human only, and not God incarnate, the story makes no sense.

Another stumbling block is God’s “abhorrence for sin” and the need to satiate a “righteous” God. These Christian concepts are foreign territory for many people. Why, if God is so loving, does He demand sacrifices for sin?

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God Speaks to Each of Us in Our Own Love Language

The poignance of human longing, existential angst, and the intimacy of God with us

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Photo credit to Carolyn Weber: author, speaker and professor

Carolyn Weber has always been an academic, but she is no longer an atheist. She has a B.A. Hon. from Huron College at Western University, Canada and a M.Phil. and D.Phil. from Oxford University, England. She has taught at faculty at Oxford University, Seattle University, University of San Francisco, Westmont College, Brescia University College and Heritage College and Seminary, and she was the first female dean of St. Peter’s College, Oxford.

My inspiration today comes from an interview of Carolyn Weber by Jana Harman on the Side B Stories podcast. You can listen to the hour long interview in episode 4, Finding God at Oxford – Carolyn Weber’s story. She turned her personal story into a book, “Surprised by Oxford”, which is being made into a screenplay staring Phyllis Logan from Downton Abbey and Mark Williams from the Harry Potter movies.

In the interview, Carolyn Weber shared that she was drawn to the romantic writers of the 17th and 18th centuries in her college years because they wrote about infinite longing. Carolyn long recognized a similar longing in her own life, and they romantic writers resonated with that longing in her. 

Carolyn was raised in a non-religious home. She had no experience with religion, and she was not familiar with the detail of Christianity or the Bible.

She recalls that she knew nothing of the Bible until she read the Bible for the first time in a college class. As an undergraduate literature major, her first impressions of the Bible included included recognition of how well the story of the Bible holds together in intricate detail, though it was written over many centuries by almost four dozen different writers.

These elements of Carolyn Weber’s story remind me of my own story. I was raised in a religious home. We were Catholic, and we went to church every Sunday, but I had never read the Bible. I knew next to nothing about the Bible before college, and church seemed to have no relevance for me.

I was also an English Literature major. I also read the Bible for the first time in a college class. I wasn’t particularly drawn to the romantic writers, but I did notice the theme of longing, and it intrigued me. (You can read my story here.) Our first impressions of the Bible were also very similar.

I recognize that my resonance with Carolyn Weber’s story may not translate to every reader (and maybe not to any reader). A statement she made in telling her story, however, may. She said, “God speaks to us in our love languages.”

I can identify with that, perhaps, because my “love language” seems to be so similar to hers. The same things that spoke to her, spoke also to me. I will explain below, but I invite you to consider as you read (or go back to listen to her story) what your love language is and how God has spoken intimately to you in your love language.

Continue reading “God Speaks to Each of Us in Our Own Love Language” →