Tim Hayes – Page 14

Full of Sores

Until very recently, I’ve been troubled by the idea of arbitrary suffering; not persecution, but the agony which falls upon many of us for no apparent reason. It was perhaps my greatest fear, that some day I’d be abandoned to suffer pointlessly and alone.

God’s promise to care for me (1Pe 5:7) wasn’t actually helping much; He does, in fact, let some of His children suffer unspeakable things for prolonged periods, not for any obvious wrong-doing, like Lazarus: immobile, full of sores, exposed, vulnerable and dependent, begging for scraps until his very last day. (Lk 16:19-21) This was a mystery and a worry, until I heard Maybel’s story.

Maybel, an elderly, ailing woman with no family or friends, suffered for over a quarter century, wasting away in a convalescent home. Blind, mostly deaf, ravaged by painful stomach and back issues, debilitating headaches, disfigured by facial cancer, constantly drooling, surrounded day and night with unbearable stench and shrieks of the insane, she spent her days strapped in a wheelchair – her only human contact from overworked nursing staff, who considered her the most daunting to care for of all their patients due to the horror of her appearance.

She was discovered quite accidentally by a seminary student back in the mid-70’s, as he offered her a flower and wished her a Happy Mother’s Day, not expecting much of a response. She held up the flower to smell it, thanked him for his kindness, and promptly asked if she could give it away to someone who could enjoy its beauty, since she was blind. He wheeled her over to another patient, and she offered it up saying, “Here, this is from Jesus.”

As he wheeled Maybel back to her room and learned more of her story, it became clear that this was no ordinary woman. Over the course of the next three years they become friends. He often read scripture to her, pausing to let her continue quoting from memory. They’d sing the old hymns; she knew them all by heart and would pause to explain how much a certain phrase or verse meant to her. He took notes from their conversations as she encouraged, challenged and comforted him, ministering to him and praying for him. She never complained, always cheerful, thoughtful, kind and joyful.

One Sunday afternoon during final exams, overwhelmed with distraction and worry, unable to keep his mind in focus, he wondered what Maybel thought about, lying in bed or strapped to her wheelchair, as the seconds ticked by, day after day, year after year … decade after decade. When he asked her she said, “I think about my Jesus. I think about how good he’s been to me. He’s been awfully good to me in my life, you know … I’m one of those kind who’s mostly satisfied … Lots of folks wouldn’t care much for what I think. Lots of folks would think I’m kind of old-fashioned. But I don’t care. I’d rather have Jesus. He’s all the world to me.” She then began to sing an old hymn …

Jesus is all the world to me,
My life, my joy, my all.
He is my strength from day to day,
Without him I would fall.
When I am sad, to him I go,
No other one can cheer me so.
When I am sad he makes me glad.
He’s my friend.

Mabel was an overcomer, remaining thankful, cheerful and joyful through the most unspeakable afflictions. God worked in the midst of what appeared to be arbitrary and pointless suffering to glorify Himself and His mighty power through the frailest and ugliest of us. Maybel was a broken woman in every earthly sense, but she was powerful (Ep 1:19-20), a Spartan on the spiritual battlefield until she went home to glory.

It turns out my greatest fear wasn’t being left alone, or suffering, in itself. I was afraid I’d never be able to glorify God in such a state. (1Pe 1:7) After hearing what God did in Maybel, I’m no longer afraid; she’s living proof that we can suffer with God, in God, and for God no matter what the trial. (Ro 8:35-37)

I will overcome, I already have, because greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world. (1Jn 4:4)

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Vengeance Is Mine

The question of evil and suffering in the world is perhaps the strongest argument against the existence of God. The reasoning is that since a good and loving God wouldn’t allow so much evil and suffering, either God is not good or there is no God. Many are deceived by this line of thought.

There are two basic problems with this argument. The first lies in a presumption that no ultimate good can possibly come of all of the evil and suffering God allows; that He simply cannot have a good reason for doing so. This is merely arrogance, claiming to have ultimate knowledge of what constitutes a good outcome, and defining the meaning of life in terms of human innocence and suffering. It is a man-centered view of existence and presumes to know better than God.

One obvious benefit from God allowing evil is that it provides a context in which God may fully reveal and glorify Himself. If there were no sin we would know very little about the love, wrath, faithfulness, justice and amazing character of God. God does promise He will eventually deal justly and perfectly with all sin (Ro 12:19); nothing will go unresolved. If we don’t find this a sufficient motive for God allowing evil and suffering, if we don’t value God’s response to sin, perhaps we don’t rightly value the glory of God.

The second major problem with this argument lies in how to define evil itself if there is no God. Plants and animals aren’t evil; only Man is evil. Animals don’t violate moral law as they impose suffering – they live according to their design and aren’t punished for this; justice is irrelevant in the realm of Nature. Man is evil because he violates a moral standard or code which define his actions as wicked and inappropriate; the victims of evil therefore require justice.

For any moral standard to be legitimate and binding, one to which we may rightly hold people accountable, we intuitively understand that this standard cannot be sourced in Man himself, merely our opinion or preference. Apart from a divine standard, one man’s opinion about good and evil is just as valid as any other. Yet we act as if our understanding of morality is binding on others whether or not they agree with us; it doesn’t matter how many people hold a certain moral belief, a standard doesn’t become legitimate just because we like it.

This is inherent in our understanding of morality itself and we cannot escape it; we impose our definition of evil on others irrespective of whether they agree, as if moral law were a divinely revealed, universal standard.

The very fact that we accept the existence of evil in the world is actually then very strong evidence that there is a God. In other words, the argument we are considering here must borrow God’s definition of evil in order to even be an argument.

We cannot live as if evil doesn’t exist, or as if it’s merely a matter of preference or opinion: all of us believe in God in this sense – we act as if there’s a divine being with a moral standard which He uses to evaluate human behavior, a standard to which he holds all people accountable.

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Friend

When Judas was in the very act of betraying Christ, Christ knew exactly what Judas was up to, how wicked it was, and how much pain and suffering it would bring upon Himself. Christ saw Judas coming toward Him in the garden of Gethsemane, temple guards in tow, to betray the Son of Man with a kiss.

Judas was committing, in all likelihood, most evil act in all of human history. Nothing else compares to it, betraying the perfectly innocent, precious Son of God to crucifixion and death. Jesus had already warned, ^“The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born.” (Mk 14:21) This was evidently a peculiarly unique and wicked sin. No other act is ever described in such grave terms.

Yet, as evil as this act was, as sold out to Satan himself as Judas Iscariot was at that moment (Lk 22:3), Christ addresses Judas as His friend. (Mt 26:49-50) Christ extends the offer of friendship one last time, as if to give Judas one final opportunity to be honest with himself, and with Christ, before they took Him away.

This may be the greatest example of fulfilling Christ’s own command, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Mt 5:44) We’re to bless those who wrong us, do good to them, wish them well, not decide what their punishment should be or wish them any harm. If we truly believe God is perfectly just, and also perfectly merciful, we’ll not hesitate to leave all in His hands.

It’s not that we shouldn’t acknowledge sinful behavior for what it is, or protect ourselves and those we love from abuse, but when God calls us to suffering, we should not retaliate. We should be praying for our enemies and seeking their welfare, regardless what they’re up to.

When we behold the wicked, it’s so tempting to allow unrighteous indignation to well up within us, as if we’d never do such things, and begin to posture ourselves as knowing what they deserve and wishing it upon them. But this disposition doesn’t spring from humility and love; it isn’t Christ in us. It springs from the lie that God is unjust, that we can do better. We can’t. God is good, only God is good, and He is always good.

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Her that Is Divorced

Christ teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount that marriage is sacred. If a man pursues a married woman with the intent to defile her current marriage then he’s as good as done it: wrongful intent is equivalent to wrongful action. (Mt 5:27:28) It’s about the heart, not just the action.

In the process, Jesus teaches us something else about marriage: when God’s Law permits divorce (31), the spirit of the marriage relationship implies the grounds for divorce are quite strict. Note carefully the qualifying exception: sexual impurity or infidelity (32a); it’s when a husband has come to hate, resent or mistrust his wife in a manner comparable to what’s expected if she’s become sexually impure, that we should consider the relationship properly irreconcilable. (Mt 1:18-19)

This can easily be seen in the Torah itself: it’s when a wife finds no favor in her husband’s eyes that he’s to divorce her. (De 24:1) If his heart has become so hard towards his wife that he finds no mercy or compassion for her, no love or concern or care for her, the spirit of the marriage is already broken so deeply that it’s better for the woman to be released of the marriage bond. Divorce isn’t God’s original intent for marriage; it’s how Love deals with hardness of heart. (Mt 19:8)

The implication is that reasonable men don’t become so hardened toward their wives, such that they cannot possibly live with them in peace. So, as long as people are minimally reasonable, there should be no divorce … as long as wives aren’t adulterous.

However, the Pharisees had evidently turned this provision for divorce under exceptional circumstances into a sort of wife-swapping, putting away their wives for trivial reasons and deeply violating the spirit of the marriage covenant. (Mt 19:3) In these cases, where the marital relationship isn’t so deeply broken, marrying a divorced woman permanently breaks the marriage covenant in much the same way adultery does (Mt 5:32a), because this step prevents her from being reconciled to her former husband according to God’s Law. (De 24:3-4)

We should keep this context in mind when Christ adds: “and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” (32b) This is significant since in Torah, when a woman is divorced by her husband, she is free to remarry. (De 24:2) Is Christ saying Torah permits a certain kind of adultery? Is He changing the moral standard?

Paul doesn’t seem to think so: he says if an unbelieving man departs his marriage, implying he abandons or divorces his wife, she’s no longer bound to her marriage covenant, implying she’s free to remarry (1Co 7:15), just as Torah says. Paul wouldn’t allow this if remarriage was inappropriate in a properly irreconcilable context, if it constituted adultery under a newer, higher standard set by Christ.

It seems much more reasonable to interpret Christ, not as correcting Torah or creating a higher standard, but focusing on the spirit of marriage. Re-marrying a divorced woman under less severe circumstances, unless all reasonable hope of the prior marriage being reconciled has expired, expresses an irreverence for the marriage covenant.

Divorce is acceptable only under the most extreme relational circumstances, and the divorcing husband should consider his action permanent. If a divorced woman believes her former husband may eventually change his mind, and wants to wait and leave the door open for reconciliation, that’s up to her; it isn’t necessarily wrong for her to move on, but if she does she’s effectively permanently sealing the termination of that marriage, as her former husband has decreed it.

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Praise His Word

I was warned early in my spiritual journey to not worship the Bible, to not make an idol out of it (1Jn 5:21), to avoid what we might call bibliolatry.

Certainly, the idea of bowing down to a bible, a literal physical book, worshipping it or praying to it, never crossed my mind. Yet the spirit of this warning might be taken a bit further, suggesting we shouldn’t love the words of scripture too much, and this is perhaps a more interesting and relevant concept. How much should we value the words of scripture? (Ps 19:10) What does the value we place on them reveal about us and our spiritual state? (Ps 119:127)

Asked another way, can I envision God reprimanding me for loving what He says too much? for taking Him too seriously? for treasuring His words too much, or trying too hard to understand His ways and obey His commands? (Is 66:2)

In other words, what’s the practical difference between loving God and loving what He says? (1Jn 2:5) Can I be loving Him and disinterested, even the slightest bit, in what He’s saying? (Ps 119:155)

Jesus says those who love Him will keep, guard or cherish His words. (Jn 14:23) He’s telling us there’s a direct connection between how we treat His Word and how we view Him; our view of His Word reveals our heart toward Him. (24)

It’s easy to mistake a love of Bible study and teaching the Bible, even memorizing it and quoting it to others, for a love of God’s Word. Yet, if we aren’t earnestly obeying all of it as well as we can, in both letter and spirit, we aren’t loving God’s Word itself at all: we’re just loving what we can do with it, and missing the whole point. (1Ti 1:5-7) God equates loving Himself with obeying His commands. (1Jn 5:3)

Do we praise God’s Word as we’re praising Him? (Ps 56:10) Are we delighting in God’s Law so much that we’re constantly thinking about it? (Ps 119:97) consumed with wanting to understand and obey it more and more? (20)

If God actually were to equate our love for Him with how we treat the Bible (Re 3:8), how would it go? (Mt 7:24-27) Seems to me very likely that He will. (Jn 12:48)

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Write in a Book

When Christ reveals His ultimate purposes and plans to His church, to prepare her, guide her into all truth, edify and comfort her, He doesn’t simply send a prophet, an apostle or a teacher; Christ reveals the message to a trusted apostle and enables him to write it down in a book. (Re 1:11) This may seem uneventful to us at first glance, but I think it’s significant.

As we pursue truth, particularly in spiritual things, we have very few options:

1. We may trust God to speak directly to us to confirm what’s true.
2. We may trust other “selves” to tell us what God has revealed to them.
3. We may trust what we read in a book which claims to be inspired of God, a text which bears up under the most intense scrutiny over time.

The first two options are obviously problematic because we’re all flawed and tend to misunderstand and misrepresent truth, even when God clearly reveals it to us. Even when we’re trying our best we often get it wrong, much less when we’re actually trying to deceive ourselves and others. This makes even written materials suspect, since they’re likely just more permanent variations of the same.

To be rightly grounded in truth, we need a book which not only claims to be inspired by God, but which proves itself out to be so over many generations, generally received as God-breathed by those loving and pursuing God, based on how its words encourage, strengthen and direct us.

And, ideally, this would be a book written down by holy people who both love God supremely and also suffer greatly in providing it to us, who receive its message under persecution and difficulty, who actually do suffer in their own pursuit of God, and who have no hope of profiting personally in any way from writing it.

And if this book actually is inspired by God, we expect to find those who aren’t pursuing God to be careless with it, taking it out of context and using it for their own benefit. And we find those hostile to God relentlessly and irrationally attacking it, opposing it, maligning and mocking it, blind to their own irrationality in the process.

The Bible, the Word of Truth, fits this expectation to a “T”, and it’s the only book which does. It’s the foundation of Western civilization, an ongoing miracle for us all to discover and cherish. Many who won’t claim to be Christians take it as truth on a moral and spiritual level, astonished at how such a book could have come to us by any natural means.

And those who attack and denounce it must inevitably take it out of context, twisting its words as they would no other text to which they’d give an honest read. It’s clear they hate its Author and cannot give it the chance it deserves. (Ro 8:7)

To love God is to love His word; it becomes the joy and rejoicing of our hearts (Je 15:16), just as He is. (Php 4:4)

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Pluck It Out

It is perhaps the harshest statement in the entire Bible: “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.” (Mt 5:29) The command is at the epicenter of the greatest sermon ever preached, spoken by Christ Himself. It’s obviously important. (Mt 7:26) What does He mean?

Context is helpful: sexual sin, lust and adultery. (27-28) The implication is that efforts to avoid sinning, particularly in this area (1Co 6:18), are to be as extreme as necessary, such that if even a part of our own body is compelling us, it’s better to rid ourselves of that body part than live in sin. If our eye is forcing us to break God’s Law … lose the eye.

Yet, clearly, body parts don’t make us sin; they simply can’t offend us in this way: our body does what we tell it. The problem isn’t any part of our body, it’s our mind and heart. Plucking out our eye would only help if our eye were actually the root cause of our sin. It isn’t, so don’t take Christ literally here.

Perhaps there’s a hint in how Christ frames it: “if thy right eye offend thee”. How could one of our eyes be offensive and not the other? one eye flitting back and forth on its own whether we like it or not? Or our right hand be offensive (Mt 5:30), always getting into things without our permission? He’s speaking in metaphor, using body parts to illustrate heart tendencies.

Point is, nothing physical can make us sin: sin is always a choice of our will (Ja 1:14), a choice to move away from God, from Truth. This is why God holds us accountable, and why sin makes Him angry. (Ro 1:18)

And sin always springs from a lie we’re believing and clinging to instead of God. (Jn 8:32) The only way to root sin out is to supplant our lies with truth and move back toward God. (2Ti 2:25-26) It’s a journey, actually a battle, one lie at a time, and Christ is telling us to be intense about it.

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Till All Be Fulfilled

Early in His ministry, Christ commands us to reject the idea that He has come to abolish God’s Law (Mt 7:17a): He didn’t come to destroy Torah, but to fulfill it. (b) This is evidently central to Christ’s teaching, so it’s important to get what He’s saying.

First, since Christ didn’t come to abolish Torah — He didn’t abolish Torah. Yes, it’s stating the obvious, yet most of us still don’t seem to get it, and somehow construe the passage as if He said: “I came not to abolish Torah, but to abolish it.” Perhaps the blinding power of presupposition is demonstrated here as well as it can be; some of us only see what we want to see in scripture, so we miss its message.

The fact is, if we aren’t diligently keeping all the Mosaic law we’re able to keep then we’re making this very basic mistake, which Jesus is telling us right up front, in plain and simple language, not to make.

Of course few argue whether God’s moral law is still valid; we know we aren’t free to steal, kill and destroy as we please. Virtually no one debates this since it’s so obviously wrong; the lie is generally more subtle, that Christ just abolished the civil and ceremonial parts of Torah, that these less important laws were temporary.

Yet, Jesus says that until Heaven and Earth pass away, no part of Torah will be abolished, until all is fulfilled. (18) In other words, not even the smallest nuance of Torah will become obsolete as long as Heaven and Earth remain; until every detail of God’s entire plan for the ages is accomplished. This includes every Old Testament prophecy and every New Testament prophecy.

So, those who arbitrarily classify God’s laws as moral, civil or ceremonial, claiming only moral law is still relevant, however we define it, are headed for trouble. (Ps 119:118) Christ is telling us in no uncertain terms that we’re not to neglect even the least of the commands: we’re all supposed to be trying to keep all of Torah that we’re able to keep; it’s all essentially moral in nature. (Mt 22:40)

Another lie is that since Jesus kept the law perfectly and has become our righteousness, we don’t need to worry about keeping Torah, that somehow His flawless obedience gives us liberty to be disobedient. Jesus rejects this when He tells us anyone willfully breaking any part of Torah as a manner of life will be the least worthy of His kingdom. (19) He’s referring here to our actual lifestyle, not imputed righteousness.

Sure, many texts of scripture are difficult to reconcile with this one, we get it; but we can’t just ignore the problem and pick the side we like. Stewards of the mysteries of God must be faithful (1Co 4:1-2), and not handle the Word of God deceitfully. (2Co 4:2)

It’s our duty to wrestle this out until we find a perspective which does justice to all scripture, including this key text in the introduction to the greatest sermon ever preached. Otherwise, we may find ourselves, unlearned and unstable, wresting Pauline passages out of context unto our own destruction. (2Pe 3:15-16)

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His Own Purpose

Humans are distinct from animals in that we must have purpose in our lives, meaning, a reason to be alive. We act as if we’re aware that we’re designed with some objective in mind, and that we expect to be evaluated according to some standard, related to how well we’ve realized our purpose.

The existence of a design standard further implies someone, the Grand Designer, Who is evaluating us, and that there are real consequences for neglecting or resisting our design, rewards and punishments involved in this life and the next, due to our performance. (Php 2:12) This is all instinctive, built deeply into our very physiology; we know it’s true, and we can’t escape it. (Ro 1:20)

To pretend we are the ultimate judge of ourselves is to miss the whole point; we didn’t design ourselves so we can’t give ourselves purpose. We know the standard isn’t arbitrary, it’s not something we can simply make up as we go. And no other created person can tell us our purpose any more than we can.

We may try to obtain some semblance of meaning by taking up responsibility, putting ourselves together and trying to make the world a better place. The fact this actually works is telling; it must be somewhat aligned with our true purpose. (1Ti 5:8) If there weren’t an ultimate Designer, this might be the best we could do.

Yet our instincts reflect reality; we’re fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps 139:14), and it’s our Creator Who gives us meaning: if God says we’re missing the point in some way, ignoring this isn’t helpful. God is love, and His design is best.

God has set specific, unique objectives for each of us (Ep 2:10); this is our calling, which we must discover in Him and pursue. (2Ti 1:9) It’s an invitation to challenge and adventure, to discover beauty and fulfillment of indescribable value; though there are shadows all about us pointing us to this reality, there’s no earthly parallel.

The genius of God’s Way is that it not only perfectly suits our individual design, it places each believer within the context of a cosmic team, part of a divine body pursuing an eternal goal together, for which we’re all perfectly suited. We aren’t struggling through this life, enduring all its suffering and malevolence, alone. (1Pe 5:8-9)

It is only within this context that suffering itself can truly be called a gift (Php 1:29), when we’re voluntarily suffering for a higher purpose. (Mt 5:11-12) What He has called us to is unspeakable glory in Him. (Ro 8:18) Perfect fulfillment and satisfaction on every conceivable level.

Christ, our perfect example (1Pe 2:21), perfectly exemplified how to find and fulfill our purpose: He didn’t come to make everyone happy, or even Himself (Ro 15:3); He came to do His Father’s will, and to finish His work. (Jn 4:34) In the same way, we’re to prove the will of God for ourselves, and then do it. (Ro 12:2)

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Dead Unto Sin

God says, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Ro 6:11) What does He mean?

When we’re dead we’re unresponsive; we don’t interact with the world or function within it any longer.

To be dead unto sin then is to be beyond its reach, no longer subject to its appeal, disinterested in its enticements, to say as Christ did, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” (Jn 14:30) It’s natural to ask then, How might we attain to such a state?

Yet this is evidently the wrong question for the believer: God’s telling us we already have attained to this state; we’re to reckon this to be true, acknowledge it, and live accordingly. The right question to ask is then, How do I identify that part of me that’s dead to sin? How does that part of me live my life, and not the rest of me?

Paul identifies part of himself, the flesh, offering nothing good; it doesn’t equip him to do anything good he wants to do. (Ro 7:18) So, there’s a part of him which wants to obey God, which knows what’s right, an inward man which delights in God’s Law (22), which he calls his mind, and a different part (the flesh) which wars against the good part. (23)

So, we might think of ourselves as having a sort of dual personality, two different versions of us which behave very differently under the same conditions. (Ro 7:19) We might also think of a set of beliefs as a personality which embodies these beliefs; it’s a perfectly reasonable way to describe it. (Pr 1:20-23)

So, we might think of our flesh, the carnal mind (Ro 6:7-8), or the old man (Ep 4:22), as that body of lies to which we’re still clinging, either intellectually or perhaps emotionally or subconsciously, due to wrong teaching, being emotionally biased because of a wound or carnal desire harbored within us, etc. Whatever the root symptom, the underlying substance is the lie.

Putting off the old man, and being renewed in the spirit of our mind (Ep 4:22-23), is then to rid ourselves of these lies and to be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Ro 12:2), such that we’re progressively walking more and more fully in the Way, the Truth and the Life – Christ in us, the hope of glory. (Col 1:27)

Reckoning then is noting that all the lies we believe are terminal; each one has a unique death sentence pronounced over it. (Ps 1:6) We’ve no allegiance to it, no obligation to follow after it.

It’s also remembering there’s a part of us which already believes the truth, a part of us which is alive unto God (Ro 6:11): this is the life of Christ in us.

When we look for this part of us, asking God to enable us to recognize it, to realize that we believe the truth and experience our faith in Him, He does so. (He 4:16) We’re free to walk in the light with Christ, if we will. (Ro 6:22)

When we engage our will to walk in this new man (Ro 6:19), the spiritual man, the mind of Christ (1Co 2:16), Christ delivers us from the body of sin (Ro 7:24-25) so we can walk in newness of life. (Ro 6:4) We overcome, because greater is He that’s in us than whatever’s in the world. (1Jn 4:4)

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