Hello everyone from Myrtle Beach! Yes, that’s right – I’m on vacation. But I’m not taking a vacation from writing a blog this week. However, it will be a brief departure from the current series, “Who Is God?” So while I’m not going to write an article that fits in perfectly with the current series, it still will reveal some things about God’s character.

Everyone enjoys a nice vacation. Sometimes we just need to get away for a little while from the hectic pace of everyday life. Like many people, we’ve had our share of vacations over the years. We’ve taken a Florida vacation, several “let’s go visit family” vacations, some mini-vacations to see some attractions, some fun vacations that include amusement parks, a lot of camping vacations, and a historical sites vacation (my personal favorite). I even took what I called “The Ultimate Guy Trip” last year with my best friend of forty years.

Now we’re at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It’s a beautiful place with tons of restaurants and attractions, but the main draw, of course, is the warm sun, the sandy beaches, and the endless Atlantic Ocean. It’s the sight of the water and waves and the expanse of the blue skies that turns my thoughts to God.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m not big on being outdoors on a hot day, and it was warm when we were on the beach a couple days ago. I’m also not a big water person, so jumping in the ocean isn’t #1 on my list of things to do. I’d much rather being in some air conditioning reading a book if it’s going to be in the 90’s. However, sitting on that beach with Jenni, Cassie, and our friends, enjoying the breezes that made the hot sun and sand more tolerable, I couldn’t help but look out at everything that God had created and wonder to myself, “What an incredible God we have! How could anyone look at this and not see the love of a Father who cares for His children’s comfort and enjoyment?” My thoughts then turned to the Psalms:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth (Psalm 19:1-6).”

There is something about the beauty of the natural world that inspires awe of God in me. To think that I was sitting on just one little speck of this planet and everything I could see and touch was created by God. And not just one little speck of this planet, but even more it was just one tiny speck of this entire universe. I had similar thoughts a few years back standing on a bridge overlooking a creek at night. As I stood there looking up at the starry sky taking in the abundance of stars and a section of the Milky Way that can only be seen on a dark, clear night, I was filled with a heart of gratitude and sense of amazement at the breadth of God’s creativity.  

The wide ocean with it’s incredible variety of sea life is something to behold. Just watching the waves surge in and listening to it’s melodic sounds can fill a person with a sense of peace and relaxation. And though we didn’t really get the chance to see much of the sea life, you are always aware that it’s out there. Turtles, jellyfish, sharks, fish of hundreds of types – just the thought of it all is astounding to the mind.

Why would God go through all the trouble? Well, as Jesus said, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).” Or as James reminds us, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights (James 1:17).” In other words, God went through all the trouble for us. He loves us and cares for us deeply. Just as He created the beautiful garden for Adam and Eve, He’s created the whole world for all mankind. It’s our home, and just like a loving father and mother provide a home and other good gifts for the children they love, all the natural world serves as a reminder of our loving Father in heaven.

So these were among the many thoughts I had on our vacation. I started this article while we were there; I’m finishing it now that we’re home. I will remember this trip for as long as I have a memory. I will remember it for the loving wife and daughter I shared it with. I will remember it for the friends we had fun and laughs with. And I will remember it for the blessing to experience a touch of the love of God.

The sky was turning increasingly dark. Ominous clouds covered everything from horizon to horizon. And then it started – the rain.  It rained and it rained and it rained. It seemed that it would never stop as the fields began to get saturated with endless moisture. No one had seen this amount of water before, and it seemed that the world was coming to an end.

No, I’m not describing Indiana, though it certainly sounds like it with all the precipitation we’ve had this spring. Instead I am referring to the most devastating disaster that ever came upon the earth – Noah’s Flood. It’s often referred to that way, though the vast majority of Christians would say that it was God who caused the Flood.

Why would He do that? Why would God cause a worldwide Flood that would destroy every living man, woman, child, and animal except for those on the famous ark?

The answer seems simple when one reads the pages of Scripture. Look at how it’s stated in Genesis 6:5-7.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.  The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

Clearly the Lord was very troubled by the evil and wickedness of mankind. Who could blame Him? Their thoughts were filled with evil all the time. He was so upset and filled with regret that he was determined to wipe out everyone but Noah’s family.

But why save Noah? What made him special? What made God single him and his family out from the rest of humanity? As the narrative in Genesis tells us, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God (Genesis 6:9).”

Now the picture is starting to become clearer. What made God so angry with the rest of mankind was not just the fact that they were wicked and evil, but it was what lay at the root of their wickedness that bothered Him so much. Unlike Noah, the rest of humanity was not even close to walking faithfully with God. Mankind’s unfaithfulness had escalated tremendously since the day of Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden. And God was ticked! He had watched generation after generation ignore Him and descend further and further into sin. He couldn’t take it anymore and He was out for blood.

Isn’t that the way a lot of us have heard this story? The way it’s told makes God out to be a vindictive, bloodthirsty tyrant. He will get revenge on anyone who doesn’t acknowledge Him and follow Him. And nothing pleases Him more than crushing His enemies.  

It’s that view of God that has caused some atheists to reject Christianity. Again and again they ask, “Why would I want to worship a God like that?”  But is that what’s really going on in this story? I know that some would say to me, “But God is a just God who must punish sinners. He has the right to judge evil people.” I’m not denying that He has that right; He is sovereign over all His creation and can certainly do that if He desires. I’m just asking, is that what He really desires?

Not according to Scriptures. Ezekiel tells us, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live (Ezekiel 33:11).” That’s the true heart of God. His desire is that all people come to Him and live.

If that’s true, then why did God destroy all mankind? Why not spare them and hope they would come around to following Him?  I believe the answer lies with how mankind’s evil and wickedness was manifesting itself.  As we’re told just a couple verses later, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence (Genesis 6:11).”  That last phrase is the key – “full of violence.” Mankind’s wickedness had become so severe that violence was prevalent everywhere.

What if God in His infinite knowledge knew that man’s violence was so awful that they would soon destroy themselves? What if it was so severe that the violence would eventually make it’s way to Noah and his family? What if the only hope for mankind’s future, and the future hope of salvation, was for God to take the extreme action He did in order to save Noah and his family and thereby save a future for humanity? Afterall, if the violence would have ultimately led to the murder of every human being, where would the hope for a future be then?

Seen from this perspective, God’s actions are actually rooted in love. His goal was not to destroy mankind but to save mankind from completely destroying themselves. I’m convinced that He took an action that He didn’t want to take but had to.

Of course, I could be wrong. I’m certainly open to that possibility. But as I have stated in every article since I started this series last month, what we see in Jesus is what we have in God. Jesus and our Father are one. Can you picture Jesus vindictively wiping out humanity because they had rejected Him and were living wicked and evil lives? We’re talking about the one who pleaded for humanity when he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34),” and that was after being brutally beaten, abused, and humiliated by his killers, who, ironically, were perpetrating the same kind of violence that led to the Flood.  Only now, instead of killing each other, they were killing the Son of God. And yet he still showed them compassion and love as he was dying an agonizing death on the cross.

So if I’m in error, I prefer to err on the side of love. As John clearly stated, “God is love (1 John 4:8).” Since love is the very core of who God is (and that is certainly what Jesus demonstrated to us all), then everything God does must somehow be rooted in love. So where some see wrath, I see love. And that’s what makes God’s grace so essential for us all.

I’m about to make an admission that probably won’t shock anyone. And if I were a betting man, I’d be willing to bet that every parent who reads this article will know exactly where I’m coming from and would make the same admission. Are you ready? Here it is. When my kids were younger, there were times that I got angry over things that they said and did. There. I feel better now. Thanks for letting me unburden myself.

Seriously, every parent has been there at some time or another. Let’s face it, our kids can sometimes drive us nuts. And honestly, we drove our parents nuts sometimes too when we were kids. It’s part of life. Kids are going to make mistakes and do dumb things. It’s what we call the growing up process.

It’s because we often lose our cool in those moments when our kids mess up that I think we have a tendency to automatically assume that God gets angry with us when we – His children – do dumb things. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When our kids break our rules, we get angry, scold them, punish them, and send them to their rooms (or some other form of punishment). So when we break one of God’s rules (or most of them if we’re honest), He would do the same to us, right?

And that brings us back to the image of God as the abusive Father. Since we assume He gets angry with us for sinning against Him, and since He is a holy and just God who cannot let sin go unpunished, it can be easy for us to picture Him up in heaven waiting to lower the boom on us. It’s what many call His wrath.

Fortunately though, because of the scheme He and His son cooked up that we talked about in the previous article, God took out His wrath on Jesus rather than on us. Because His wrath has now been satisfied by Christ’s cruel death, (even though everyone still continues to sin), God is now finally able to relate to us with love. And that’s where the comparison to an abusive father comes into the picture. It’s similar to the parent who is so enraged by the offenses of their child that they beat them mercilessly, and only then, when their rage has subsided, are they able to treat their child with kindness and care. But in this case God didn’t take out His rage upon those who were guilty but upon His completely innocent son instead.

Is that the kind of father God is? I’m here to say, “No way!” Furthermore, I’m here to say that if that’s the way we’ve understood how God felt about mankind because of our sins, then we have completely misunderstood God’s disposition towards us from the very beginning. In fact, I believe that the Scriptures reveal to us a God that has loved us with all His heart from the very start and never stopped loving us and was never angry with us. What makes me say that? Let’s turn to Jesus.

As I have stated several times already in this series about who God is, the greatest and most complete revelation of God is provided to us by Jesus. He is the exact representation of God (Hebrews 1:3). All the fullness of God lived in Jesus (Colossians 2:9). As Jesus said himself, he and the Father are one (John 10:30). And as John further pointed out in his gospel, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known (John 1:18).” Notice that John states that Jesus is not only in closest relationship with the Father and is God himself, but also came to this earth to make God known to us all. That is a very important aspect of Jesus’ earthly ministry that often gets overlooked. He not only came to free us from sin and to give us life, but he also came to reveal to a broken world who God really is and how He truly feels about us. So once again we see that who Jesus is, is who God the Father is.

So if we want to know if God is the abusive father that He is sometimes portrayed as, we need to observe how Jesus treated sinners. Did Jesus angrily punish those who sinned, or did he treat them in an entirely different way? However Jesus acted is exactly how God the Father acts towards us.

There are so many excellent examples to choose from. I will start with the story of Jesus talking to the Samaritan women at the well as recorded in John 4. Jesus is on his way back to Galilee from Judea and is traveling through Samaria. His disciples are not with him at the moment that he decides to stop at Jacob’s well for a drink of water. Also approaching the well is a Samaritan women. Jesus engages her in conversation and through it we learn that she has had five husbands and is currently having a man who is not her husband.

Now the story is not super clear here, but it seems as if her run of husbands and her current man is a result of a sinful life she has been living. If that is what is happening, how does Jesus respond? Does he berate her? Does he angrily chastise her? Does he threaten her with fire and brimstone? He does none of those things. Instead he lovingly reaches deep inside of her to reveal himself to her as the living water that leads to eternal life.

That story reminds me of the story of the woman caught in adultery. In a similar fashion as the Samaritan woman, we have another woman living in sin. And again Jesus is not condemning her or showing the slightest inclination towards an angry rebuke or punishment. And like he did with the Samaritan woman, he revealed the loving heart of God to her.

We see a similar response from Jesus toward his disciples. Here they were abandoning him in his greatest hour of need, running for their lives as Jesus was getting arrested and handed over to the authorities on the night before he was crucified. If ever there was a time for righteous retribution, this certainly was it. But is that how Jesus reacted? Not in the slightest. After he rose, he greeted his disciples warmly and expressed love and peace to them.

And how about Peter? The disciple who was arguably the closest to Jesus denied him three times. If the picture of God as an angry deity who is ready to smash all those who dare oppose or deny Him is true, surely Jesus should have denounced Peter in the harshest of terms.  Peter should have been wiped off the face of the earth. But as we know, that’s not how Jesus treated him. Instead he restored him with a love that is beyond the world’s understanding.

We could say the same for Paul. As Saul he was totally opposed to Jesus and all his followers. He was bent on destroying the church. Shouldn’t God be enraged by this behavior? Shouldn’t he demand his life in return for this rebellious child’s arrogant and violent ways? We know how this story ended. Instead of experiencing God’s wrathful punishment, he was made alive by Jesus and became perhaps the greatest defender of the very faith he once sought to eliminate. He came face to face with the love of God and God’s love won.

In all these stories and so many more from the New Testament, we do not see a wrathful, abusive Father who is sternly determined to deliver harsh punishment on everyone who sins against Him. What we see rather through Jesus Christ is a God who is determined to touch the minds and hearts of His wayward children with His indescribable grace and love, and thereby changing their hearts and minds forever. He transforms sinners with grace, rather than with threats of lightning bolts from heaven. He exposes his heart to sinful man, rather than revealing a fist by which to pound them. He conquers them with self-sacrificial love, rather than demanding unyielding obedience and worship under the cloud of judgment and eternal torment. That’s why we find Jesus hanging out with tax collectors and dining with sinners on a regular basis. As he said on one occasion, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).” That’s the heart of God that Jesus came to earth to reveal. He is not out to abuse you and treat you harshly. He’s out to love you with all that He is. That’s who God is.

We all probably know stories of people who have experienced abuse, or at the very least have heard them. Perhaps you’ve experienced it yourself. If so, I mean in no way to open up any wounds with what I’m about to write. I also don’t mean to diminish what you or others have experienced. No one should have to be subjected to that kind of treatment. Being abused in any form is a terrible thing but it is a reality we cannot ignore in this broken world full of broken people.

With that said, I am going to discuss abuse in this week’s article. The reason I am going to discuss it has to do with a way in which I have come to believe that God’s character – who He is – has been maligned. I don’t think that it’s been done maliciously or even intentionally. I think it’s the result of a story about what happened at the cross and why Jesus died such a brutal death. It’s a story that many of us have heard since we first became a Christian, and as a result has become firmly implanted in our minds and accepted by many Christians. I even used to believe it myself, but I see this story in a very different light now than I once did.

You probably know the story. It goes something like this. Starting with when Adam and Eve ate that forbidden fruit, man had been in a state of rebellion against God. This rebellion manifested itself in all manners of ugly sins. Because of that, God was angry with mankind. Being a just and righteous God, this sinful rebellion had to be punished, and the punishment that was called for by God’s law was the death penalty. Man’s rebellion could not be allowed to continue without justice prevailing. If God didn’t punish this sinful behavior, He could not rightly be called a just God.

So how was God to punish our behavior without destroying all of humanity? His solution, so the story goes, was both a sign of His justice and His love. Instead of punishing us, He would punish someone in our place – a substitute! This substitute would have to be perfect, without any hint of fault or blemish. This would be absolutely necessary because this substitute would need to be someone who had lived in perfect obedience to God. Only this perfectly obedient substitute could appease the anger of our just God.

Where would God find this perfect substitute? Certainly not with any regular human being. We’ve all sinned and fallen short of His glory. So according to this story, God the Father and God the Son came up with the perfect plan. What if the Son became a man and therefore became that perfect substitute? Then the Father could put all the sins of man upon His Son and pour out His angry wrath by punishing His Son. That would then satisfy God’s wrath and His justice. By punishing His innocent Son, the Father’s anger towards us subsided. This now enabled God to deal with man on the basis of love. And that is why there is the angry, wrathful, vengeful God of the Old Testament and the merciful, compassionate, loving Father of the New Testament. Isn’t that wonderful?

That’s the story I often heard. You’ve probably heard that story too, or something very similar to it. Over the years, however, my understanding of what happened at the cross has changed significantly. Don’t get me wrong – there are many parts of the above story that I believe are correct. However, one of the parts that seems off to me is the idea that God the Father was punishing His Son for something he did not do. If ever there is a picture of abuse, perhaps this is it. How could a loving Father do that to His innocent Son? Wouldn’t that suggest that He is an abusive Father? It would be like me beating and whipping my son because the neighborhood kids had made me angry by egging our house, slashing our car tires, and torturing our dog, even though my son had absolutely nothing to do with it.

It has been suggested that my analogy comes up a little short because Jesus took this
punishment willingly. There is no question that Jesus was willing to die. As he said to his disciples concerning his life, “ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10:18) The question is, however, was Jesus being punished by God?

I think a lot of people think so because of what a verse like Isaiah 53:5 says: “the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Other verses in Isaiah 53 seem to suggest the same thing: “for the transgression of my people he was punished,” and “it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer.” (Isaiah 53:8, 10)

At first glance, it would appear that Isaiah is prophesying that God would punish His son. However, when you look more deeply, another picture comes into focus. What we start to see is that the view that God is punishing Jesus is a misperception on our part. For example, in Isaiah 53:4, we see that “we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.” The New English Translation puts it this way: “we thought he was being punished, attacked by God, and afflicted for something he had done.” The KJV, NASB, NKJV, and NLT all say something very similar.

The point is that we mistakenly thought that it was God who was punishing him, but that’s not what was really happening at all. So if God wasn’t punishing Jesus, who was? Isaiah doesn’t leave us hanging.  n his own words, he clearly states, “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” (Isaiah 53:3) In other words, it was man who punished him. Think about that. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, was punished by man, not by his own Father. It was man who betrayed him. It was man who despised him. It was man who planned to kill him. It was man who devised schemes against him. It was man who tried him in court under false pretenses. It was man who ordered his flogging. It was man who sentenced him to death, even though he knew he was innocent. It was man who punched him, spit on him, and punctured his head with a crown of thorns. It was man who whipped him mercilessly. It was man who mocked him. It was man who stripped him. It was man who nailed him to the cross. It was man who delighted in watching him suffer and die a horrible and shameful death.  

Let us not forget that Jesus and the Father are one. So when we think about what happened on the cross, let’s not put the blame on God the Father. Let’s not malign His character by portraying Him as an abusive Father. Instead let’s remember that God Himself, in Jesus Christ, took the brunt of all mankind’s hatred and was brutally beaten and killed as a result.

Why would He do it? Why would he allow mankind to treat him so unkindly? And what about all that wrath and anger He felt toward us because of our sins? The answers to those questions will have to wait until Part 2 next week. For now, let us get the image of God as an abusive Father out of our minds. He was not the one punishing His son on the cross. That is simply not who God is.

I may be completely off base, but I’m willing to bet that my last two articles have left you with some unanswered questions. Let me take a shot at it.

1. If God wasn’t too impressed with the best law keepers of Jesus’ day (the Pharisees), then why did He give Israel the law in the first place?
2. If God desired mercy and love above all else and the law couldn’t produce that in us, then what did He expect the law to accomplish?
3. Since God specifically gave the law to Israel, does it have any place in the lives of Gentiles?
4. What purpose, if any, does the law serve today?

All good questions. And even if they hadn’t crossed your mind, it’s still good to find answers to them. In doing so we will learn even more about who God is. So let’s get started.

The Pharisees thought they were the apple of God’s eye. And why wouldn’t they? They were the upper crust of society. Everyone looked up to them as the nation’s leaders, not only politically but religiously too. No one knew the law like they did. Presumably no one followed the law like they did either. Surely this made them loved and approved by God.

One story alone exhibits this arrogant attitude they had. It’s in a parable Jesus told to some people who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.  

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

As I mentioned in last week’s article, the Pharisees exhibited a self-righteous attitude that is only too common for religious legalists, even in the 21st century. Notice how the Pharisee thought he was so accomplished at obeying the strict requirements of the law. He was convinced he was better than those “sinners.”  

Since the Bible makes it clear that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), we should hold no illusion about the Pharisees or modern-day religious folks.  Like all of us, they come up short too, despite their best efforts to live according to the law. And the thing is God knew we would come up short. He never intended for any of us to find righteousness and salvation through obedience to the law.

So then what’s the reason for the law? There really are some good ones. First, Israel was just getting started as a nation when God gave the law to them. They had just left over 400 years of Egyptian enslavement behind. They didn’t know what it meant to be a nation. Something was needed to bring a sense of unity, purpose, and order. The law was an important element in that effort. It served a purpose to this new nation similar to the purpose the U.S. Constitution served to our young nation.

But that’s certainly not the only reason. The Bible offers us some very clear and specific additional reasons. For example, Paul states, “Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.” (Galatians 3:19) In other words, one of the purposes of the law was to act as a restraint on man’s sinfulness until Jesus came. As Paul further stated, “So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24) As a guardian, the law demonstrated that our attempts to live up to its lofty requirements of righteousness were utterly hopeless. If man was to be saved, he would have to look elsewhere. And that brings us to the next reason for the law.

Though Jesus fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17, Romans 10:4), that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t serve a purpose for mankind today. However, that purpose does not apply to believers. Allow Paul to explain again. “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.” (1 Timothy 1:8-11) To put it another way, the law’s perfect standards are meant to reveal to mankind it’s hopeless position of trying to save itself. It’s pure folly to think that we can ever be good enough or could ever obey God’s law well enough to earn salvation. That is complete nonsense.

So what is the lawbreaker and rebel to do? When confronted by God’s righteous and holy standards, the sinner is to cry out for mercy. And here we see the grace and love of God in action. Since God never intended for the law to save us, He gave us another way. That way, of course, is Jesus Christ. Once again, he fulfilled the law on our behalf. To restate what Paul wrote in Galatians 3:24 from the NASB, “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” And there it is – the law’s main purpose – to lead us to Christ. When the law fulfills that purpose, when a sinner cries out to the Lord, God’s purpose has been met. His grace has once again touched the heart of sinful man and restored him by the love of the one who gave it all for him.

So we see that God is anything but a lawgiving killjoy. He never gave us the law to destroy our good time. It’s quite the opposite. He gave it to us to bring us to Jesus Christ and to take us from death to life. It’s the supreme act of a loving Father and another example of His essential grace. So see the law for what it was truly intended for and see your Father for who He truly is – the one who has a heart beating with an unquenchable love for us all.

Last week, we began to address the question of whether God is a lawgiving killjoy who threw a bunch of do’s and don’ts at us to keep us from having a good time.  And as we’re going to do throughout this series about “Who Is God?”, we’re examining the life of Jesus.  As the very embodiment of God Himself, the answer to our question lies with him.  How he lived and what he said and did reveals to us exactly who God is.  So with that in mind, let’s return to the matter of whether God is a lawgiving killjoy.

Israel certainly had some advantages that other nations seemed to lack.  One of those advantages was “the receiving of the law.” (Romans 9:4)  The law – the Ten Commandments and all the rest – was a source of great pride to the people of Israel.  In fact, it became such an important part of their lives that it became a stumbling block to them.  As Paul explains, his fellow countrymen “pursued the law as the way of righteousness.” (Romans 9:31)  However, they failed to attain their goal because “they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.” (Romans 9:32)

Among those Israelites who pursued righteousness through the law, no one compared to the Pharisees and teachers of the law.  They were rigid in their adherence to all the rules.  But as we saw last week, though they honored God with their lips, their hearts were far from Him.  Why would that be?  If God gave the Israelites the law, surely He expected them to follow it to the letter.  So shouldn’t He have been thrilled with the Pharisees?

Obviously, He wasn’t.  How many times did Jesus give them a verbal lashing by calling them hypocrites and a brood of vipers?  Clearly they weren’t as good at following the law as they and others thought they were.  But the real problem was something else entirely.

The real problem manifested itself on several occasions when Jesus encountered the Pharisees.  One of those times was when Jesus was eating with Matthew and a bunch of tax collectors and sinners joined them.  Upon seeing this, the Pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples why he ate with people like that.  Jesus response was very revealing.  Addressing the Pharisees he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12-13)

What did Jesus mean by quoting Hosea 6:6?  Why would God say that He desired mercy over sacrifice? Wasn’t sacrifice a key component of the law?  There were all kinds of sacrifices for all types of occasions, and God was the one who stipulated them.  So weren’t they important?

Of course they were.  But the Pharisees, while better than most at following the letter of the law, were missing the spirit of the law.  At the root of mercy is love.  What good does it do to follow the law without love?  That’s why God desires mercy over sacrifice, because He desires love above all else.

We see this same matter come up again when Jesus and his disciples went through a grainfield one Sabbath.  The disciples were hungry and began eating some of the heads of grain.  The Pharisees were incensed and said, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:2) Jesus replied, “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” (Matthew 12:7)

And there it is once again – “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  Love over law.  The Pharisees just weren’t getting it, and that really shouldn’t surprise us.  Religious folks steeped in legalism often fall short on the mercy side.  Their legalism tends to steer them towards being judgmental.  They know the law and they are going to enforce it.

It’s no different in the 21st century church.  Religious Christians know what you should or should not do to be a “good Christian,” and they will find a way to let you know and hold you accountable. Afterall, they’re a good Christian, so God has surely accepted them.  So that puts them in a position to be the “Good Christian Police” to everyone else.  

The problem is the same for the 21st century religious legalist as it was for the 1st century Pharisee. Their determination to do all the right things and their conviction that that is what God requires often leads them to be lacking in mercy and compassion, the very qualities that God really desires to find in His children.  

What the legalist misses is the same thing the Pharisees missed.  A fixation on living in obedience to the law does not lead to a loving heart, but a loving heart will lead to obedience to the law.  It’s automatic.  A person whose heart is filled with love cannot help but live in accordance to God’s law.  In fact, it’s so automatic that the person filled with love will do it without even trying, or perhaps even realizing it.  

It’s sort of like breathing.  As long as our body has life in it, we will breath.  We don’t even realize we’re doing it the vast majority of the time.  Think about how many breaths you took today.  Could you count them?  How many were you consciously aware of?  For me, I hadn’t thought about my breathing until I started typing this paragraph.  Why don’t we think about it?  Because breathing is natural.  We don’t have to try to do it or force ourselves to do it.  It just happens.  It’s automatic.

And so it is with the person whose heart is filled with the life and love of Jesus Christ.  That person doesn’t have to try to obey the law or force themselves to do it.  It just happens.  And why wouldn’t it. Isn’t love the fulfillment of the law?  Jesus said it is.  As recorded in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared, “Do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law.” (Matthew 7:12)

As we examined last week, Jesus said he came to fulfill the law.  If you were to ask the average Christian to use one word to best describe Jesus, what do you suppose that word would be?  I think it would be love.  How did Jesus fulfill the law?  With love.  He is love, just as his Father is.  So if Jesus is love and he lives in you, that means his love lives in you.  So as you abide in him, his love will flow through you and you will live a life that will automatically live according to the law.  

So I hope it’s clear that God is not a lawgiving killjoy.  I would say that He is a lovegiving lifejoy.  Just as He and His son and the Holy Spirit have enjoyed an eternity of life and love together, so He wants us to experience His life and love too through Jesus Christ.  That’s just one more glimpse into His essential grace.

It’s possible that after reading this, you may still have some unanswered questions, such as, “Why did God give the Israelites the law in the first place?”  Or perhaps you even wondered, “What place does the law have, if any, in the 21st century?”  I don’t want to leave you hanging, but you’ll have to wait until next week’s blog article.  So come back next week to find out what the purpose of the law was in the first place.

You’re running late for work.  You don’t want to get docked and you don’t want to have to work late to make up the time.  What to do?  You come up with the most natural answer – drive fast!  If the speed limit is 55, why not go 75?  Besides, the speed limit is just a suggestion, right?  And if there aren’t any police around, have you really broken the law anyway?  It’s only breaking it if you get caught.  And it’s just a speed limit.  It’s not like it’s a real law, like murder or burglar or something nasty like that.  

Not only that, but we all know that the only reason they make silly laws like that is because our governing leaders don’t want us to have any fun.  They just can’t wait to rob us of our joy and freedom and control everything we do.  

I know that my story is probably a bit of an exaggeration.  We all know that there are usually good reasons for the laws we live under.  But seriously, don’t we sometimes feel that way about God?  Don’t we often see Him as a lawgiving killjoy?  It’s an image of Him that is often ingrained in our psyches at a very young age.

Think about it for a moment.  When you were a child, how often were you told that God might punish you if you didn’t obey His commandments?  Or how about all the Bible stories you heard about bad things happening to people who broke God’s laws.  So what conclusion would your young mind reach? You better be a good boy or girl or else.  

With that image of God thoroughly ingrained in our developing brains, many of us carry that image forward into our adult years.  But is that who God really is?  Is He some crazed, lawgiving Scrooge who just can’t wait to stomp on our good time?  

Once again, we turn to Jesus Christ.  As a reminder, Paul said of Jesus, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” (Colossians 1:15)  Just one chapter later, Paul also declared, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” (Colossians 2:9)  And the writer of Hebrews stated, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” (Hebrews 1:3)

Get the picture?  Once more we see in unmistakable language that what we see in Jesus is an exact picture of who God is.  So again, what we see Jesus doing and what we hear him saying is exactly what God the Father would do and say.  

So let’s take a look at Jesus and see if he fits the image of a harsh, lawgiving killjoy.

Now there’s no question that the Old Covenant law was given to Moses by God.  Just a casual glance at the account of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 makes that perfectly clear.  So the question isn’t whether God is a lawgiver; He certainly is.  The question is why did He give them the law.  Did He give it to them to control them and to prevent them from enjoying life?

In Jesus’ own words, he connects the law to one of the purposes of his life on earth.  “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18) So he makes it clear that he was not coming to abolish the law that was given to Moses about 1,500 years before him.  Instead, he was coming to fulfill them.  Why?  Could it be because he knew that no human being could fulfill them?  Certainly no human being up to that time ever had.  So if that was his reason, would that not suggest then that the law was never given as a means to salvation?  

And yet just two sentences later, we find Jesus saying to his disciples and the crowd, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20)  I don’t know about you, but this sounds like that it could be a contradiction of his previous statement.  The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were the most “righteous” people in Jesus’ time.  They were big on observance of the law.  They had the first five books of the Bible memorized and could quote the law forward and backward.  They even added more rules and restrictions to God’s original laws for purposes of clarification or to try to ensure that they wouldn’t even flirt with accidentally breaking any of the laws.  If ever there were a people guided by living a moral life, they certainly had to be chief among them.  And now it sounds like Jesus is saying that we must be better at observing the law than they were.

But is that what Jesus meant?  Was he saying that we have to live more morally pure lives than the Pharisees and teachers of the law in order to be declared righteous?  Let’s see what he had to say.

There was an occasion in which Jesus and his disciples were eating some food with unwashed hands. To the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, this was an absolute no-no.  Observing this, they asked Jesus why they didn’t follow the traditions of the elders and do the ceremonial washing of their hands before eating.  Jesus’ reply provides key insight that will explain what Jesus said in the Matthew passages above.  “He replied, ‘Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’” (Mark 7:6-7)

Take special note of what Jesus said.  The Pharisees and teachers of the law honored God with their lips but their hearts were far from Him.  The heart is the key to matter.  The Pharisees and teachers of the law were very good at external observance of the law but their hearts were not right.  Observance of the law and being a wonderfully moral person is not what God is after.  That’s why Jesus called them hypocrites.  

God instead is after something else.  It is possible to be very good at following and obeying the rules but still be missing what God desires most.  And what He desires is both a reflection of His true nature and provide us a greater understanding of why He gave the Israelites the law in the first place.  So what is it that God desires most?  That’s what we will dive into in the next article.  

Of all the images we have in our minds about who God is, one of the most common ones is God as a judge.  It’s like we hold scenes from Law & Order in our heads.  The typical picture looks something like this.  We see a gray-haired, humorless God sitting in his black robes behind an elevated judge’s bench just waiting to declare our guilt and prepared to sentence us with a severe punishment for all the awful things we’ve done throughout our lives.

What a terrible specter, if it is true.  Imagine standing before an all-powerful God with no defense before His unstained, perfect presence.  What hope would you have beyond condemnation?  With that image of God, who wouldn’t live in fear?

But is it true?  Is that who our God is?  And how can we know?  

As we saw last week, to know if this is who God is, we need to look no further than Jesus Christ.  As Jesus said to his disciples, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)  Or as he said later, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)  So the character we find in Jesus is exactly the same as the character of his Father.  What we see Jesus doing and saying is exactly what God the Father is doing and saying.  In fact, Jesus said so on more than one occasion. (John 5:19, 8:28, and 12:49)

So back to our question.  Is God the terrible judge that we described at the beginning? For the answer, let’s take a look at how Jesus treated “sinners.”

Imagine getting caught committing one of the worst sins you could possibly commit. Imagine the embarrassment.  Imagine the shame.  What treatment would you expect from most people? Sympathy?  Unlikely.  Compassion?  Ya, right.  Condemnation?  That’s more like it.

But what treatment would you expect from Jesus?  Let’s turn to one of the best known stories in John’s gospel to see firsthand.

“At dawn he (Jesus) appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.  The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.’” (John 8:2-4)

Now it can’t get much worse than that.  It wasn’t that the teachers of the law and the Pharisees had heard that the woman had committed adultery; it would seem that they actually caught her in the act! How do you live that down?  And not only that, but it wasn’t just any Joe or Susie that caught her.  It was the most important and respected people in Israel’s society, ones with the moral authority to damage her standing in her community, if not worse.  And as if that’s not bad enough, it’s also possible that they may have paraded her in front of Jesus and the crowd in the same condition they found her in.  Could it be more humiliating than that?

Let’s continue now and see what transpires next.  “‘In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’”  They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.” (John 8:5-6)  

As the text clearly indicates, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus.  What they said about the Law was correct.  It did call for the death of anyone caught in adultery. (Leviticus 20:10)  But they weren’t so interested in what they Law said as they were in what Jesus said.  They wanted to discredit him before the crowd.

For our purposes, we’re interested in Jesus’ response too.  As a reminder, how Jesus treats this woman is how God would treat her.  His response will give us a huge glimpse into the heart of our Father.

“But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.  When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’  Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.” (John 8:6-8)

Jesus’ answer was both crafty and wise.  It’s not as if the Law reserved the death penalty only for those who committed adultery.  There were many other parts of the Law that also called for the death penalty.  It’s possible that many of those anxiously waiting to throw the stones were themselves guilty of breaking laws that called for death.  Even if not, they certainly were guilty of sin.  If nothing more, Jesus was certainly calling for a heart of compassion.  So with Jesus’ words, we receive the first hint of who God is – a compassionate God.  But there’s more to come.

“At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.  Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’  ‘No one, sir,’ she said.  ‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’” (John 8:9-11)

Based on Jesus’ own words, what would we now say about God?  Is He the black-robed, condemning judge that so many people fear?  Absolutely not!  Remember, Jesus said he only did and said the things he saw and heard his Father do.  So if Jesus did not condemn her for her adultery, then neither would his Father.  And if God wouldn’t condemn her, then what sin could you possibly commit that would cause God to condemn you?  Doubt? Cheating?  Denial?  Murder?  If He would condemn you for your doubt, He certainly would have condemned Eve, but nowhere do the Scriptures provide even a hint that she stood condemned.  If He would condemn you for your cheating, then He definitely would have condemned Zacchaeus for all the people he had cheated out of their money.  Yet Jesus show him grace, stayed at his house, and declared that salvation had come to him. If your denials could cause Him to condemn you, then Peter would have never stood a chance after denying Jesus three times.  But John records an incredible encounter of love between Jesus and Peter just days later.  And if God would condemn you for murder, then where would that have put Moses, David, and Paul?  All three were murderers yet all three became great servants of God.

There is no sin too great for the love and grace of God.  God is not a condemning judge. If you are in Christ, you have no reason to live in fear.  Now you may point out that Jesus told the adulteress to leave her life of sin.  Some would interpret this as a warning that the wrath and judgment of God awaited her if she didn’t stop sinning.  That is not at all what Jesus is saying to her.  Filled with a heart of compassion, Jesus is simply urging her to stop a practice that is not good for her.  Adultery, like all sin, has natural consequences, none of which are positive.  As the Scriptures tell us, the wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23) Nothing good has ever or will ever come from practicing sin.  So like a loving parent who doesn’t want to see his children do self-destructive things, Jesus wants her to abandon that way of life, which is not life at all.

So no matter what you have done, you are never out of the reach of God’s essential grace. He’s not looking over you with a gavel in His hand ready for you to cross a line for which there is no recovery. Instead, as we see with Jesus’ treatment of the adulteress, He is constantly seeking to assure you that you do not stand condemned.  Leave that twisted view of God behind.  See Him as He really is – a God who loves you with all His heart and wants you to know His love and life beyond all else.

It’s funny how our perspective on things changes with age, maturity, and wisdom.  If you’re anything like me, you probably could come up with several examples of things you don’t see the same way now as you did when you were a child.

For example, when I was a young boy playing Little League baseball, I thought sports was just something that adults got to do for fun.  I had no concept of the business side of professional sports and how money, not fun, was the main motivator for many in the game.  I also used to think highly of all the honorable people in elected office who were doing it out of a great sense of duty and patriotism.  Little did I know as a kid how much the allure of power drove some into office and corrupted them to the core.  

Let’s take it closer to home.  How about the perspective we used to have about our parents?  How many of us used to secretly think that our parents were just mean people when they enforced the rules and instilled discipline when we broke them?  Honestly, how many of us thought that our parents were nothing more than fun killers?  And on top of that, how often did we consider them to be completely unreasonable and uncaring people who only pretended to love us?  Let’s face it, they just weren’t fair!

Then the years went by and we grew up.  We became parents ourselves and we began to see our parents in an entirely different light.  It’s then that we began to understand that everything they did was motivated by something other than the ugly things we attributed to them when we were young, immature, and foolish.

If that’s how our perspective can change regarding our parents, who else could we have possibly misunderstood?  Who else have we seen in a certain light and could be completely wrong about?  And what effect has that misunderstanding had?  That’s what we’re going to explore over the next several articles.  

And that brings us to the trillion dollar question that needs to be answered: Who is God?  It’s an extremely critical question.  Our answer to it reveals everything we think about Him.  Who we think He is has huge ramifications on how we think He sees us and responds to us.  And what we believe He thinks of us affects the relationship we have with Him in every way.

I maintain that many American Christians have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to who God is.  From pulpits across this nation, we’ve been been taught an image of a God that just doesn’t square with whom the Bible reveals Him to be.  We need to divorce ourselves of our preconceived ideas, no matter what their origin, so that we can begin to see the true nature of our Father.

So who do you think God is?  Is He a jealous God whose rage burns whenever your heart turns to someone or something other than Him?  Is He a harsh  judge who is gleefully waiting to convict you of all your wrongdoing?  Is He a disappointed God who is ready to pour out His wrath upon all humanity for every sin we’ve ever committed?  Is He the good silver-haired grandfather in the sky who is full of wisdom?  Is He the loving dad you’ve always wished you had?  Is He the stern taskmaster, ready to whip you for every offense?  Is He the perfectionist you could never possibly hope to please?  Is He the abusive father who took out all His anger on HIs innocent son so that you could have a chance to be saved?  Or is He a mysterious, invisible, distant Spirit that you could never really get to know and have a personal relationship with?

There are so many different views out there about who God is.  They can’t all be right.  And yet these different images of God have been painted by many people over the centuries.  Who’s right?  What can we rely on?  How can we determine the truth?  And who can we trust to reveal the true nature of God?

There actually is a book and a person we can turn to for the answer to our trillion dollar question.  The book is, of course, the Bible.  The person – well, let’s allow him to speak for himself.  

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? (John 14:8-10)

Jesus makes it perfectly clear.  If you know him, you know the Father.  The Son and the Father are one.  That is also why Jesus declared later in John’s gospel, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)  There can be no mistake.  Knowing Jesus is the same as knowing God, and that is the key to eternal life.

Paul knew this to be true as well, and he put it this way.  “The Son is the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15)  Perhaps you’ve thought to yourself, “How can I ever get to know God?  How can I ever know someone I can’t even see?”  Paul’s answer: Get to know Jesus.  He is the image of God.  Who he is is who the Father is.

The writer of Hebrews gives us even more insight.  He writes, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” (Hebrews 1:3)  Think of that – “the exact representation of his being.”  So again we see that if we get to know Jesus, we can have confidence that we know God.  They are one and same.  What we see in Jesus is exactly who his Father is.

So that’s the direction we’re heading.  We are going to discover who God really is through examining Jesus Christ.  Once we see Jesus’ true nature, we will know the nature of God.  Then we will be able to answer the question that started us on this journey – Who is God?

It can be a frustrating thing to live under the weight of perfectionism.  In fact, it can be quite debilitating.  Think of living every single day trying your best to always get everything right, to never mess up once no matter what you are doing.  And all the while, you know you can never get there.  To make matters worse, it’s not good enough that you’re trying real hard.   It’s not even good enough if you get close.  Remember, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

It’s one thing if you’re trying to live up to your own perfect standards; it can be quite another when it’s someone else’s.  Perhaps you’ll learn to cope with your own unreasonableness.  Maybe you’ll eventually learn to give yourself an “A” for effort.  But if it’s someone else’s perfectionist traits you’re trying to appease, you may be in for a miserable time of it, especially if that person is someone very close or important to you.  What if that perfectionist is your parent, your spouse, your boss, your teacher, your coach, or your friend?  What if they are on you regularly, constantly criticizing and belittling you because you keep coming up short in their eyes?  What if your entire relationship is built on trying to please them?  Wouldn’t we consider this to be abusive?

And yet that’s how many of us think of God.  We see Him as this demanding perfectionist in heaven looking down at us with glaring, angry, disapproving eyes because we keep messing up.  I know I once held that view of Him, at least to some degree.  I remember as a child thinking of God as being somewhat like some of the nuns I had as teachers in school – one wrong move and WHACK goes the ruler across the knuckles.

We American Christians are obsessed with our behavior.  We’ve come to think that that’s what God cares about most.  We’re so obsessed by it that that is the central message heard in many churches on Sunday mornings.  “Clean up your act or else.”  Straighten up or God’s going to get you.”  Nonsense!  If you’re in Christ, you’re HIs – period!  This behavior obsession has become so prevalent that is has even colored the way we view sanctification.  As I mentioned last week, we’ve come to think of being sanctified as the process of cleaning up our outward behavior when it simply means that God has set us apart for Him.

I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about our behavior.  Of course He does.  He doesn’t want to see His children indulging the flesh.  Sin always brings about harmful consequences.  But rather than focusing on our outward actions, He’s more concerned with what’s happening on the inside.  Just look at Jesus’ words as recorded by Matthew.  “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” (Matthew 23:25-26)  And just in case we missed his point, Jesus further declared, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.  In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (Matthew 23:27-28)

I think Jesus’ point is abundantly clear, and it wasn’t that we should use Dawn Dishwashing Soap on both the outside and inside of our dirty dinner dishes.  His point is, what good would it do anyone to have the best, most pristine-looking behavior on the outside if they are dead on the inside?  Would God be pleased with someone who could live by all the rules, as if any of us could, but yet their heart was far from Him?

Think of Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler in Luke 18:18-27.  The rich ruler wanted to know what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Notice what his concern was based on – what he had to do.  He was focused on outward actions.  Jesus reminded him of the commandments, to which the ruler claimed that he had followed all of them since he was a boy.  Now putting aside his “humility” for a moment, Jesus was trying to help the ruler realize how futile it would be to try to earn eternal life by trying to be perfectly obedient to God’s commandments.  He clearly didn’t get it.  So Jesus shifted it to the next gear.  He challenged the ruler to sell everything he had and give it to the poor.  The young man went away sad because he didn’t want to part with his great wealth.

Now before we miss it, Jesus was not suggesting that the way to eternal life is to sell everything we have.  What he was attempting to do was to get the rich ruler to realize that the way to eternal life is not through what we do.  In fact, it is impossible for us to ever be good enough to earn eternal life.  As Jesus said in response to his disciples, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” (Luke 18:27)

Here’s the deal.  I believe we have confused sanctification with transformation.  Sanctification results in the inside change that Jesus referred to.  Remember that once we’re saved, we are born again as a new creation.  We are made new on the inside where the Spirit of God is united with our new spirit and new heart.  At that moment we’ve been set apart from our old dead spirit and made alive again.  But obviously our flesh is still our flesh.  That hasn’t changed and that’s where transformation comes into the picture.

Transformation has to do with the changes that occur in our outward behavior, thinking, and attitudes after we’ve been justified and sanctified.  It’s something that typically happens over an extended period of time.  It is what Paul refers to when he implores the Christians in Rome to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” (Romans 12:2) or when he reminds the Ephesians “ to be made new in the attitude of your minds.” (Ephesians 4:23)  Our mind is the battleground upon which the fight for a clean outside takes place.  That’s because our actions and emotions typically follow what we think or believe.  If you believe you’re still nothing but a rotten sinner saved by grace, you will most likely act like a rotten sinner.

But that’s not what you are.  God has made you new.  He wants you to know that and believe that.  That’s why we are urged to fix “our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) and to “set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” (Colossians 3:2)  As we focus on Jesus, our minds begin to change.  As our minds change, what we believe about ourselves begins to change.  As we begin to see ourselves for who we truly are in Christ, our behavior and attitudes begin to change too.  And that’s how the outside of the dish is cleaned.

So don’t put the cart before the horse.  Don’t make the transformation of your outward behavior, thinking, and attitudes more important than your sanctified heart.  If you are in Christ, you have been sanctified.  Your are new, your are His, and you already have eternal life.  Believe it and accept it.  And then allow God’s essential grace to start transforming in your life today.