Tag Christian

Learning Godly Fear

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Does being forgiven by God cause us to fear Him less, or to fear Him more?  Perhaps it’s both.

Psalm 130:4 tells us this about God: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”  To one way of thinking, this seems backwards: why does knowing that God has forgiven us make us fear Him more?  Shouldn’t we fear Him less when forgiven?  It depends on what we mean by fear.

For me, getting Psalm 130:4 to make sense with the order of forgiveness and fear required a re-thinking of repentance.  My conclusion was: the one who has not been forgiven has not repented, and the reason they did not repent was that they did not fear God.  They did not understand Him properly.  They might be afraid of God, but that’s not the kind of fear referred to in Psalm 130.

In contrast, the one who has been forgiven has repented, and they repented because they understood it was the best thing for them to do, out of a fearful respect for God.  A proper understanding of God’s character makes us turn to Him with our guilt, rather than run away from Him.  We should not be afraid of God, where we are motivated to be passive – avoiding mistakes that would anger the one we fear.  We should fear God in that we revere Him and respect His authority, and therefore actively seek to please Him.

A lot goes into repentance.  When we pray and ask for forgiveness, it’s often a simple prayer made with the proverbial faith of a child, but there are a lot of assumptions we make when we say that prayer.  Every prayer of repentance directly or indirectly acknowledges some or all of these things:

1) God as the source of the law, the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong
2) Him as the righteous judge who is personally offended by our sin
3) His omniscience, knowing we cannot hide our sin
4) His uniqueness, as there is no other God to turn to
5) His steadfast love for us, knowing He bore the cost of our sin, therefore enabling us to approach Him
6) His compassion for us, since He lived as a man
7) His power and willingness to heal us of sin
8) His consistency of character: that He is not arbitrary

If we don’t implicitly or explicitly believe these things, why would we repent and ask forgiveness from God?  Why would we expect to get it?  Exploring that set of statements could fill multiple volumes of theology books, but we don’t need that knowledge.  In His grace, He honors our simple, heartfelt confessions.  He paid the price for all our inadequacies – even when we don’t fully understand our own prayers or who we’re praying to.  The Spirit pleads with the Father on our behalf[1].  Mercifully, our forgiveness is based on His faithfulness to us, not on our detailed theological knowledge.  1 John 1:9 tells us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Even our faith is imperfect, but His faithfulness bridges the gap between our childlike faith and His omniscience.  He knows all our doubts and all their answers.  We come as we are, but with fearful respect, and are forgiven.

Only through acceptance of the cross, where Christ’s atoning blood was shed for us, can God in His Holiness commune with us.  Only through forgiveness will the Holy Spirit come and live in us.  Only by tasting of His goodness do we really know what He is like, not before.  And if we never repent, we don’t learn what it tastes like, we only know what you’ve been told about God, and we might not have been told the truth.

Psalm 130:4 shows us that genuine repentance leads to forgiveness and gives us a better appreciation of who God is.  As we experience Him more, we live Psalm 34:8 for ourselves:

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
                        Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

[1] Romans 8:26-27

Bible in a Year: Week of March 25 – 31

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Fellow travelers:

Below are the chapters to read this week if you’re following along in my Bible in a year schedule, divided into morning and evening readings.  Follow along any way you want: just do the evening reading, flip the morning and evening, read it all.  Whatever works for you and your schedule!  It doesn’t have to be Bible in a Year for everyone.

This week, we finish another book (Exodus), and begin Leviticus on Easter Sunday.  Leviticus, a guide for the priests and Levites of ancient Israel, mentions holiness more times than any book in the Bible, and continually reminds us of how high God’s standards are, even though with the events of Easter we no longer need to follow most of those Levitical practices.

Monday, March 25
Morning: Psalm 85, 1 Chronicles 7
Evening: Exodus 35

Tuesday, March 26
Morning: Psalm 86, 1 Chronicles 8
Evening: Exodus 36

Wednesday, March 27
Morning: Psalm 87, 1 Chronicles 9
Evening: Exodus 37

Thursday, March 28
Morning: Psalm 88, 1 Chronicles 10
Evening: Exodus 38

Friday, March 29
Morning: Psalm 89, 1 Chronicles 11
Evening: Exodus 39

Saturday, March 30
Morning: Psalm 90, 1 Chronicles 12-13
Evening: Exodus 40

Sunday, March 31
Morning: Psalm 91, 1 Chronicles 14-15
Evening: Leviticus 1

Doctrine in Action

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Photo by Ameen Fahmy on Unsplash

In C.S. Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters, senior demon Screwtape writes fictional letters to Wormwood, a junior demon, on how to defeat his “patient.”  In one of these letters, Screwtape advises: “As long as [man] does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance… Wallow in it… Write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which [Heavenly Father] plants in a human soul… Do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm [the cause of evil] if [it is kept] out of his will… The more often he feels without acting, the less he will ever be able to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”

Christianity is not a soul-less doctrine, but a restoration of the right relationships between souls and their Creator, which should lead to action.  Teaching should lead to love.  In 1 Timothy 1:3-4 Paul writes to Timothy: “As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.”  In his commentary on the verse, John Calvin says that Paul “judges of doctrine by the fruit; for every tiling that does not edify ought to be rejected, although it has no other fault; and everything that is of no avail but for raising contentions, ought to be doubly condemned.”

Calvin’s note and Screwtape’s fictional letter remind me of the linked Monty Python video of philosophers philosophizing about soccer while simultaneously “playing” soccer.

Every doctrine and institution of the church should empower His people to live for Him.  Are we playing the right game, and are we playing to win?

What Wisdom Means to Me

Todd R 1 Comment

I’ve had some sort of working definition of “wisdom” for most of my life.  I think most of us have.  As a teenager, I remember joking that it was the ability to learn from other people’s mistakes.  It sounded teenager-wise, but how do I know what’s a mistake?  Later, I read somewhere about wisdom being something like “skill at living life”.  Also sounds useful, but perhaps vague and worldly feeling.  Even later in life, I started thinking of it as “being able to make decisions based on facts, instead of based on wishful thinking.”  This has been even more useful, but which facts do you follow?  How do you choose between two “true” options?  What if you don’t have all the needed facts?

I think my current definition is better: Wisdom is the ability to choose between the path of righteousness and the path of the wicked.  In the Psalms and the Biblical wisdom literature like Proverbs, there is a contrast between these two paths, and the idea that moral decisions are like choosing a route between places.  You can be on one path or the other, and with wisdom, “you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path”[1]

Moving down a path is an action, and therefore, wisdom is about taking the right action, not about what we know, believe, or say.  It’s not about accumulating facts.  Facts matter, but they aren’t wisdom all by themselves.  Adding the context of the Great Commandments[2], wisdom is what tells us how to love God and others actively, and in a way based on obedience that leaves the results to God.  For example, in the book of Acts, Ananias didn’t minister to Saul, the notorious persecutor of Christians, because Ananias thought it would end up well for himself[3], he did it because God told him to, and God knew that future Saul was Paul, the author of much of the New Testament.  Ananias didn’t decide based on the facts as he knew them, but he adjusted the facts in light of revelation from God.  Also, wisdom might sometimes tell you the best action is to do nothing, to not to do something specific.  Sometimes wisdom flashes a red light while others are flashing green.  “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” – Pr. 14:12 and 16:25.

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

This way of thinking about wisdom explains why the Way, the Truth and the Life must be a Person, not a set of rules or a philosophy.  Truly, only each of us, in our individual relationships with God through the Holy Spirit, can learn wisdom.  Only in a relationship with this Person can we figure out what our purpose and identity in the body of Christ is.  This wisdom is proactive and specific to each of us.  Nobody else’s situation is your situation, and nobody else has the same relationships, abilities, and resources.  Books, advice, and experience can be helpful, but we each need to “taste and see”[4] the Holy Spirit in us, working at our very core where only He can reach, and directing us down the right paths at the right times.

True wisdom will put us on a path that provides us, and this world, a taste of heaven through us.  It is informed by a justice and righteousness – God’s law and Christ’s character – that is not of this world.  With wisdom we can build and create new things on the cornerstone of Christ.  The world might not like it, but the world is not your Creator who is all wise.  Therefore, pray for and seek God’s wisdom as the immensely valuable treasure that it is!

[1] Proverbs 2:9
[2] Matthew 22:37-39.  In short, love God and love your neighbor.
[3] Acts 9:13
[4] Psalm 34:8

Profit in Reading Genealogies

Todd R 3 Comments

Some parts of the Bible are harder to read than others.  Some things seem repetitive or pointless, but we know that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”. (2 Timothy 3:16). For me, it can be very hard to concentrate while reading the many long genealogies, mostly of people I know nothing about.  But maybe the point is that God does know all those people.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

I’ve heard a story that may or may not be true, but I’m sure it’s at least possible, and an example of how God can use long genealogies in a profitable way.  The story goes like this: a Christian who attended church regularly invited a non-Christian friend to church, and they accepted.  They had been having some discussions and the friend was curious, so the Christian was hopeful.  However, the pastor on that day decided to preach on one of the long genealogies in the Old Testament.  The Christian sat there disappointed because they were hoping their friend would hear the gospel.  In a complete surprise to the Christian, the friend said soon after the service that they had decided to follow Christ.  When asked why, the friend said something like: “I never was close with my family, but the idea that God cared about each and every one of the people listed in those genealogies convinced me that God cares about me.  He didn’t leave them out of His book.  He cares about me and wants me to be part of His family.”

Like I said, I’m not sure that this is a true story, but the point that mattered to the friend in the story remains: God cared enough about every person in those genealogies to have them recorded in the Bible.  He thought of every one of them.

God has another book full of names in addition to the Bible and its genealogies: His book of life[1] which has the name of every one of His people listed in it.  If you are a Christian, your name is in that book and God loves you as His adopted family.  Like the genealogies, this book tells us that every person is precious to God and He knows each one personally and intimately. I’ve been posting a Bible in a Year schedule, and it’s now starting 1 Chronicles which begins with many genealogies.  If you find those hard to read, maybe as you read each name, remember that God loves that person, and loves you as well.  Nobody is irrelevant to God, and that’s a key part of the good news of the gospel!

[1] Philippians 4:3, Revelation 3:5, 13:8