So...

If God is Love ...

God IS Love. From the beginning right to the end, God is Love. He has always been Love and will always be Love. Love never fails. 

Love is what inspired God to create us in the first place. Love is what inspired God to allow us the choice whether to respond to his Love or not. Love is what drove God to intervene in such a way that allowed us the full consequences of our choice if we chose not to respond to Him, yet provided an escape from that choice if we do choose to turn towards him. Love is what continues to allow us the choice to turn to Him and to his Love. From beginning to end, God is Love.

I have tried to paint the big picture of what I have come to understand about God and His Story, from beginning to end - God’s plan and purpose for humanity and his involvement in it. Perhaps looking at the big picture helps us see why, for now, we live in a world full of suffering and pain, why, for now, we live in a world where there is evil. Perhaps looking at the big picture helps us see how God is still passionately involved with humanity (even if he seems remote at times) and continues to invite us to connect with him in increasingly real and deep way.

As I said at the beginning, God has radically transformed my thinking. I feel like I am looking through a new pair of glasses and the purpose of this blog was to allow you to look through them. I hope that what you were able to see encouraged you and inspires you, as it did me, to hunger for more and more and more of this Love as a hallmark in my own life and to submit to this Love in increasing measure.

Who knows - I might have totally got the wrong end of the stick and misunderstood it all. And yet – I would never trade my new glasses. Ever. Finally things are beginning to make sense to me. Finally I feel I am beginning to connect with God the way he is, not the way I want him to be.

For me, getting a grasp of this perspective marks the only the beginning of what feels like a fabulous adventure. If any of the perspective I have tried to explain is true, it will have repercussions on every area of my life. It will shape the way my connection with God develops, it will shape the way I talk to him, the way I pray for the stuff going on in my life and the way I worship Him. It will shape the way I see the world and the way I see myself within it, the way I engage with it, the way I engage with church, with my neighbours and friends, with my children, my husband. It will shape the way I allow God to lavish his Love on me, the way I experience his Love, the way I allow his Love to transform me. 

And it has! It has changed everything. All I can say is – I want more! 

More of Him, more of His Love.

This is the last post in this series. Thank you for reading along, thank you for your comments. If, having come to the end, you have more comments or feedback of any kind, I would love to hear from you. 

And now “this is my prayer – that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight” ... “that you, being rooted and established in love, may have the power, together with all believers, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God”. ( from Philippians 1 and Ephesians 3)

The new matrix – the war we find ourselves in

So we find ourselves living in a war zone – in the spiritual realm.

The enemy might be defeated and the throne might rightfully belong to Jesus. But the enemy is not going to take defeat lying down. As Jesus is choosing not to bring his Kingdom in by force, the enemy has plenty of opportunity to continue to deceive man into believing that he is in fact still in charge. And continue to deceive us he does.

As long as he can persuade humanity that he is still in power, as long as he can persuade humanity to submit to him and to follow his patterns, as long he can persuade humanity to continue to listen to his lies, he is able to cling on to power. Every time we follow his pattern of lust for power, of greed, of jealousy, of self-centredness, we empower him. Every time we listen to his lies about God and about ourselves, we allow him the throne. Every time we listen to his lies, we allow him to keep us hostage. And so, as a whole, humanity still lives under his rule. He has no legal right to rule – that has been taken away from him. But while, as humans, we allow him to rule and allow him power, he refuses to back down from the throne, even though it is no longer rightfully his. The longer he can keep us believing he is still in power, the longer he is able to remain Prince of this World.

And yet, the truth is that he has no legal power over us, other than the power we allow him to have over us. Those whose allegiance is the Kingdom of God, those who have submitted to the King of Love and are thus citizens of God’s kingdom, are no longer legally under the power of the enemy.

So we find ourselves in the midst of a war, not against people, but against unseen powers and authorities in the spiritual realm. We find ourselves in a world where the enemy refuses to be ousted, where his patterns are still imprinted in the world all around us, where many of us choose to copy his patterns and choose to live turned away from God. We find ourselves in a world in which we have every opportunity to turn away from God again if we choose to listen to the enemy’s propaganda. Like rebels who swear allegiance to a different King, we find ourselves in a world that swears allegiance to the enemy of the Kingdom whose citizens we rightfully are. We find ourselves in a matrix which is dependent on our choices as to which kingdom we choose to empower – for now.

But the rightful King is coming. There will come a time when He will come in power and claim his throne. Then every knee will bow to him, every tongue will agree that truthfully, Jesus, the one who saved humanity from the enemy whether they recognise it or not, is King! He will establish his Kingdom forever, he will reign justly, there will be no more suffering and no more tears.

At that point God will dwell with man and man with God. Like a lover and his beloved become one when they marry, so God and man will become one, as was God’s intention and purpose right from the dawn of time.

“Hallelujah! For the Lord, our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready”. (Revelations 19:7)

The new matrix – now and not yet

And so, through Jesus’ death and his rising again, a new matrix is set in motion, irrevocably this time. Death no longer has a hold on us, the enemy no longer has a claim on us, the way into deep communion with God has been blasted wide open, allowing anyone who chooses to, to turn to God, to connect with God,  to allow God to dwell in them as they choose to open their hearts to him.

If any of what I have said is remotely true, why then does it often not feel like it? If Jesus is the rightful King, where is he? If he has the authority over the world, if he will establish his Kingdom of Love, why is the world is still such a mess and seemingly getting more evil? Why is there still so much suffering? Why are people are still living in fear,  still living weighed down by the rubbish in their lives, by their past, by their failures? People are still dying.

And so many people come to the conclusion that the things of God are simply not true. Or they build their lives around parts of the truth, clinging to them for dear life, like to the debris of a sinking ship, waiting to be rescued, in the vain hope that the debris they are clinging on will end up saving them.

But the good news is - the way the world is now is not the end! The King of Love is coming and he will establish his reign where there will be no more tears, no more sadness, no more suffering  and no more pain. The truth is that the matrix we live in now is a ‘now and not yet’ matrix. Jesus is the rightful King, but his kingdom is not yet fully established. The enemy has been dethroned, but he has not yet been destroyed and being very much alive he still tries to exert his power over us.

The incredible truth is that Jesus, as rightful King, because he is Love, chooses not to impose his rule. Because he is Love, he has chosen to bring about his reign by involving his followers, his brothers and sisters! Now, as it has ever been, it is all about community and all about relationship. 

Scripture talks a lot about us, those who believe him and follow him, being his co-heirs! Jesus wants to give us the opportunity to walk in his footsteps, to follow him and do as he did now he has blasted the way open. His desire is for us to agree to work with him and together to establish his Kingdom, together to bring heaven to earth. We are to pray that His Kingdom be established on earth just as it is in heaven! As his followers, because he wants to share the authority he won back through his victory over the enemy with us, we have the right and the authority to be involved with him in bringing about his Kingdom! Wow!

Essentially that is what the church is (or should be!) all about – his followers banding together, working in partnership and in step with Him, doing as He did when he was on earth, re-presenting Him on earth, and heralding and preparing for his reign by bringing a taste of heaven to earth. Because the rightful King is coming ... and his Kingdom is near.

The truth is - his kingdom is tangible even today for those who seek it. When His kingdom breaks through into our world, there is healing (physical, emotional, spiritual). There is joy. There is a sense of purpose and security. And there is a deep sense of God's presence and a deep realization of his Love. 

The exciting thing is - we can see glimpses of His Kingdom today, in 2011! 

I don't know about you, but I just think - yes! Let is be so! And more! More! More!

The power of the cross – living empowered

Finally, the last way in which Jesus totally changed the matrix the world was in, is that from now on, because he has blasted the way to God wide open, God himself by is able to dwell within the spirit of each believer. The Spirit of God himself makes his dwelling in each person who chooses to turn to Him and submit to his Kingship.

Reams could be and have been written about this incredible, terrible, wonderful truth as man tries to work out and share with one another what that looks like in practice.

I just want to pick out what I believe are key points.

God’s Spirit rests on each person who believes Him, who turns to him and submits to his Kingship. God has no favourites. Everyone, irrespective of their past, their background, their failures, their personality, is invited to enter into the essence of who he is. God wants to, God desires to include us into the circle of Love that he is, to “partake of his divine nature” as Peter puts it and to live, as he does, saturated and motivated entirely by Love.

Because God is Love, God’s Spirit does not bully or force anyone into doing so. He does not come to live in our spirits against our will or in a deeper measure than we allow him space to. He invites us to respond to his Love – then waits for us to choose to do so. He invites us to become part of who he is – then waits for us to choose to give him more and more space in our lives. He invites us to partner with him in establishing his purpose, his Kingdom, in our lives and in this world – the waits for us to choose to submit to his Kingship and to follow his instructions.

God knows that man is prone to make bad choices, God knows that man still lives with the cancer of sin in their lives, God knows man has a tendency to choose to worship the seen things, things other than himself. God is not surprised by it. And so he offers to live in us, his Spirit communing with our spirit, in order to empower us to make good choices, in order to minimise the poison of sin in our lives, in order to help us not to take our eyes off him and challenge us when we do and in order to transform us to be the people he purposed for us to be. He lives in us to teach us, to minister the truth of who he is to us, to minister his Love to us, and to enable us, who naturally prefer to be in control, to choose to submit to the rightful King, not out of fear but out of love.

That is brilliant news!

The power of the cross – the breaking in of God’s kingdom

Fifthly, when Jesus took back the authority and deposed the enemy through his death and rising again, Jesus opened the way to us all to become citizens of God’s Kingdom, the realm where God reigns.

The main topic Jesus talked about when he lived on earth about 2000 years ago related to God’s Kingdom, or the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus pointed out to people that there was another kingdom, there was a realm where God is King. Another Kingdom exists and it is a kingdom where Love reigns.

Jesus pointed out to his listeners that God’s Kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world. The Kingdom of God is not a kingdom of domination or of power. It does not spread because of a leader who conquers and subjects people to his rule. It grows and spreads organically, like a seed that grows into a big tree, or like yeast that affects the whole batch of dough.

In the Kingdom of God, Jesus taught, people are whole. They are free and not oppressed. They submit to the ways of Love, rather than insisting on their rights. It is not people’s status that matters in God’s kingdom. No-one is belittled, no-one is more important than another, everyone is valued and everyone has their part to play. Those who in this world are considered the lowliest because they serve, are the most honoured in God’s kingdom. Those who feel they have nothing to give are among those most welcome in God’s kingdom.

Jesus made it very clear that you can’t become part of God’s kingdom if you think you can earn your place there in any way. Becoming part of God’s Kingdom is always and exclusively by a response to an invitation from the King. Wealth and status become blocks to people who want to become part of God’s kingdom. Jesus shocks people by saying that even living according to the rules of the Kingdom does not earn you the right to be part of it, but says that being part of God’s Kingdom very much depends on a person’s heart and their response towards the King.

“I’ve got good news,” Jesus proclaimed. “The time for God’s Kingdom is near.” God’s Kingdom is not far away, it is not a long time away, it is reachable for anyone who chooses to submit to the King. Jesus supported his message by demonstrating that what we see on earth at the moment, this earthly kingdom dominated by the ‘Prince of the World’, is not the be all and end all. He healed the sick, made the blind see and the lame walk again and freed people from the demons that oppressed them.

Jesus’ resurrection and his re-claiming man’s authority over the world open the door for God’s Kingdom to be established. The throne of the world now rightfully belongs to Jesus and he is and will continue to establish his kingdom. But because he is Love, even as rightful King, he chooses not to impose his reign. Because he is Love, he chooses to partner with us as fellow humans and to bring about his reign organically, not through imposition or conquest. This King is a King of Love and the Prince of Peace. 

And so he invites us to submit to his kingship, to partner with him and together to bring about his Kingdom. God’s kingdom will be established, on earth as it is in heaven, according to the Bible. And we are invited to be part of it.

That is seriously good news!

The power of the cross – freed from the power of the enemy

Fourthly, because Jesus has defeated the enemy and deposed the dictator, the enemy no longer has a rightful claim on our lives. Jesus has freed us from the power of the enemy over us.

“He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness,” Paul writes to the believers in Colosse. “And he has brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.”

Not only does death not have a right on us anymore, the enemy also has no claim on our lives. The enemy of our souls used the fact that we turn away from God, our sin in other words, to keep us under his control. He held us hostage by doing everything in his power to keep us from turning to God. He lied to us about God, getting us to believe that God was no longer interested in us, that God had rejected and abandoned us, that God was angry with us. He lied to us about ourselves, making us believe that we are never good enough, that we will always fail and so never merit or be worthy enough to receive God’s Love. He held us prisoner through fear.

Now this enemy no longer has a ‘legal’ right over us. He no longer has a claim on our lives. Humanity is free because Jesus paid the ransom needed to release us, the ransom being our very lives. Humanity is free because Jesus deposed the dictator, ousted the tyrant and in doing so took back the authority the enemy took from humanity at the dawn of time! All requirements have been met and humanity has been legally freed! Freed from the lies about ourselves that hold us back. Freed from the guilt that dogs us when we think about our past. Freed from the lies about God that keep us away from His Love. Freed to turn to God, to receive his Love and to live in the light of it.

And that is wonderful news!

The power of the cross – authority restored

Thirdly, Jesus reclaimed the authority that had been lost.

When God created man, he gave him authority over the natural world. God had given the world to man as a gift, to look after, to steward, to enjoy. The enemy deceived man into giving him that authority. Man allowed himself to be deceived and in that transaction, through that turning away from God which leads to death, by listening to the enemy and doing as he said, he empowered the enemy against man. The enemy took man’s authority for himself and became Prince of this World. He rules as usurper, knowing that man has the right to dethrone him again. So he rules through fear – keeping man under his control through fear and through deception. Not for nothing is he described as the Father of Lies.

When Jesus rose again, he took back the authority that had been lost, that the enemy had taken. Jesus had every right to do so. It was a man who had relinquished the God-given authority to the enemy. Only a man had the right to dethrone the dictator and take back the authority that rightfully belongs to man. As a representative of the human race, Jesus was in a position to take back the authority which had been conceded. And take it back he did!

“Having disarmed the powers and authorities in the spiritual realm,” Paul writes to the believers in Colosse, “he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them because of the cross.” (Col 2:15)

After he came back to life, talking to those who had been following him, Jesus affirms: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”  

The glorious truth is, the enemy has been defeated! The enemy no longer has the ‘legal’ right to rule over this world! Jesus, taking back the authority that was lost, is now the rightful prince of the world and Scripture describes him as the Prince of Peace. There will come a time when he will take his rightful throne as King.

That is fantastic news!

The power of the cross – sin dealt with

Secondly, by his death, Jesus took on himself the full consequence of living turned away from God.

We have already seen that when we live turned away from God, when we sin as the Bible puts it, we are cut off from God and that when we live cut off from God, death encroaches on us. We have already seen that because we have all at some point in our lives turned away from God, we all inevitably experience death as a consequence.

Jesus never lived cut off or separated from God. Ever. Not even for a moment. He lived fully in the light of God’s Love, fully in relationship with Him, fully aligned to God. Death was not a consequence he deserved or had to live with.

But he willingly chose to take on himself the effect of living turned away from God. He willingly took death on himself. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest earthly friends, says: “He himself carried our sin in his body.”

The Bible sometimes talks about the wrath of God, which people often misunderstand to mean his anger against us. The wrath of God is not directed at us as much as at ‘it’, at the way things have turned out, at the fact that death has a claim on us, at the way sin separates us from God and prevents us from being able to receive the Love He lavishes on us. God’s wrath can be compared to the raging anger a parent feels when their child is going through pain, or being bullied or abused in some way. It is not anger directed at the beloved child. Not in this case.

Jesus experienced the full impact of God’s wrath, God’s anger at how things had become and at all that which cuts us off from Him, from His Love. He experienced death and at the same time, for the first time ever, he experienced separation from God. As he dies, he bears the full brunt of that separation. “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?!” Jesus cries moments before he dies.

And so, in his death, the consequence of being cut off from God, the consequence of living separated from God, living turned away from God has been met. The consequence of sin for mankind might be death, but a man has taken the consequence! Using a transactional, legal analogy, the debt of sin has been paid. Sin no longer has a ‘legal’ right on mankind. It can no longer require death as a consequence! Turning away from God had trapped us and made it impossible for us to turn back to God by our own effort. But Jesus paid the ‘ransom’ that was required in order to release the world from sin that held us prisoner. The Bible tells us that living turned away from God, or sin to put it another way, is death’s sting. (1 Corinthians 1 5:56) And so through Jesus’ death, death has lost its sting[1]. Death can now no longer claim the right to separate man from God’s Love. Anyone who wants to is now able to turn towards God again. The way into the fullness of a relationship with God, a relationship characterised entirely by Love, is now free and open.

That is excellent news!

---

[1] Once, when Jesus was chatting to a man called Nicodemus, he reminds Nicodemus of an incident that happened in the history of the nation Israel. It happened during the time in their history when they spent years wandering round in the desert. One day lots of poisonous snakes come into the camp, biting people and people died. God told Moses, the leader of the nation at that time, to make a snake out of bronze and to put it up on a pole. If people looked at the bronze snake, the poison of the snakes would have no effect on them. Jesus uses this picture to explain to Nicodemus that in the same way, anyone who looks at him (Jesus) and believes, would not be affected by the poison of sin, but would live. Because at the end of the day, God is Love. And he loves the world so much that he sent Jesus, the only one qualified to become the antidote to the poison of sin, so that whoever believes him will not die, but will live.

The power of the cross – death defeated

Jesus was the only one qualified to change the matrix of a kingdom where the Prince of this World, the enemy of our souls, rules and tries to keep man separated from God. And change the matrix he did. When Jesus died, brutally killed at the hands of those who were offended and angered by the things he said and did, the order of things was shaken to the core. When Jesus didn’t stay dead but came back to life, the matrix was once again irrevocably changed.

In what ways did everything change?

Firstly, because Jesus defeated death, death also has lost its power over us.

Death could not hold Jesus. It had no power over Jesus. Jesus was the only human for whom death was not a natural consequence. The life that was in Jesus, the life that came from living saturated by God’s Love, the lift the came from living in right connection with God, having never turned away from God, overcame death.

But there is more! Because Jesus overcame his own death as a human, he also overcame death for all of mankind! Death has no lasting hold on us either! Yes, of course our bodies die when physical death takes place. The wonderful truth however is that the effect of death has been reversed – Scripture tells us that our bodies will rise again, just as Jesus did!

Paul, writing to the believers in Corinth explains it in this way (1 Corinthians 15 – [my paraphrase]): “(Whether you choose to believe it or not) Jesus really was raised from the dead. And as such he is the first of everyone who has died or will die. Death came into the world through one man (Adam). Now the opposite, the resurrection from death, has also come through one man. Because of Adam we all die. Because of Jesus, we will all, eventually, be made alive again. But all in good time. You see, Jesus was only the first one ... Some people ask ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will we come back to life?’ What a ridiculous question! When you plant a seed in the ground, it dies and what grows from the seed you planted looks nothing like what you put in the ground. In a similar way God will give us a new body according to what he has determined. Like a seed that is sown and dies, so our bodies die. And just like that seed grows into something new, so our bodies will become a kind of spiritual body, one that can’t be destroyed again. And when the time comes for us to receive our new bodies, when the mortal is clothed with immortality to put it another way, then what was written in Scripture will come true: ‘Death, where is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?”

That is good news!

Jesus

God becomes human in the form of Jesus of Nazareth and breaks into the matrix of how things had become in the world.

Essentially he is God. By becoming human he has not changed his character. In essence he totally reflects who God is – Love. Jesus is described as the Son of God - the one who is in essence God, the one who has God’s DNA, the one who stems from God. When we look at Jesus, we can see what God is like. In that sense, Jesus and God are one, the same.

But he is more than God wrapped in human skin. He is fully human, not only in body, but in mind and soul and spirit. Jesus often describes himself as the Son of Man. Not only is he human. He is the ultimate human, the perfect human, a human the way humans were designed by the Creator to be, a human living in the fullness of what being human was meant to be all about. What makes Jesus the ultimate human is not his divinity. It is the fact that as a human he is living fully and completely in the light of God’s Love – just as God purposed for humanity at creation. He is the perfect human because in no way is he separated from God’s Love. He is fully turned to God, fully saturated by Him. That makes him sinless. He is untainted by greed, by self-centredness, by jealousy, by lust for power, by all those things that reflect Satan’s patterns and all those things that smack of death. And so all he does and all he says is steeped and saturated in Love.

Being fully human also means being limited in his attributes. Being human, he is not able to exercise the attributes that God, in his divinity, has the right to exercise. Jesus is not omnipotent (he has limited power), he is not omniscient (his knowledge is limited) and he is not omnipresent (he is limited to time and space). Paul, writing to the believers in Philippi, says that Jesus was in very nature God, but that even so he did not try to be equal to God but that being human, he made himself like nothing. (Philippians 2:6-7)

Jesus’ humanity is crucial in God’s breaking into the matrix of how things are. God, as God, cannot oust the dictator who has set himself up as ruler of the world. Only man can, because it was man who allowed him to take his place as ruler over the world. God, as God, cannot make anyone turn to him. Only man can choose to turn to God and to allow God’s Love to touch him, change him, draw him into relationship with Him. God cannot change the fact that man dies as a consequence of living turned away from God. Only man tastes death.

And so Jesus, as the ultimate human, is the only one qualified to change the matrix. As man he has the authority to dethrone the dictator. As man he is able to demonstrate what a human life looks like when life is lived fully saturated by God’s Love – something he would call life to the full, or eternal life. And as a sinless man, a man saturated by God’s life-giving Love, he is the only human who is able to take the consequence of separation with God, death, and defeat it, reversing death as the consequence of separation with God, offering an antidote to the poison of death.

No wonder then that Jesus is described as the One who Saves, the One who delivers. Only Jesus, God made man, can change the matrix and so be the Saviour of the World.

The big picture

It is against these parameters then that human history unfolds:

God is Love.

He allows man the choice of whether to live within that Love and become part of it, or not.

He allows man the consequences of his choices, because essentially he wants a relationship with man based on love, not on response to stimulus or on fear.

Choosing to turn away from God, living away from his life-giving Love brings with it dire consequences – death.

Because man chose to turn away from God on the back of listening to Satan, the one who is opposed to God and the enemy of our souls, man conceded his God-given authority over the world he lives in to the enemy.

Or, seen from a different angle, the enemy deceived man into handing over his God-given authority and usurped man’s place of authority over the world, at the same time usurping God’s place as master in man’s life.

Living turned away from God, refusing to receive His Love, empowers the enemy of our souls, enabling him to remain in the place of authority over the world and allowing him to continue his deceiving influence in our lives, keeping us away from God and his Love.

And so when we sin, when we live turned away from God, we empower the enemy against us and something dies.

God has not given up on man however. He continues to love, he continues to seek to be involved in man’s life, he continues to invite man back into meaningful and liberating relationship with him.

Man, however, is unable to turn to God by his own efforts.

The enemy of our souls imprisons man by continuing to deceive man, making him believe that God no longer cares. He makes it his business to make sure man does not turn back to God. Not only is it man’s tendency to keep listening to the deceiver. Not only has man’s tendency become to seek power and self-centredness (Satan’s values) more than love. Satan makes a claim on man’s life, claiming that because man had enthroned him in God’s place, man is now under his dominion and rule.

Yet throughout history, there are those who by faith, by choosing to ponder on the things of God, by choosing to think about what is revealed about God in Scripture (and through any other evidence) about God, are able to enjoy a meaningful relationship with God and are able to experience and taste his Love, at least to an extent. The Bible is full of stories of people like this. Yet these people are still caught up, still trapped in the matrix of a world dominated by the enemy who calls himself the Prince of this World. Man is essentially a prisoner - separated from God and powerless to change the matrix he finds himself in.

Because God is Love, he does not leave things as they are. He does all in his power to free man from his prison, from the dictator who rules, from the cancer of sin that wreaks havoc in his life.

Because God is Love, he breaks into the matrix man finds himself in. God cannot change the rules, he cannot go against his character, he cannot go against the ‘law’ of Love. He will not force man into relationship. Connection with God will always have to be as a result of man’s acceptance of an invitation into relationship. Nor will He overrule the consequences of man’s choices and simply oust the enemy whom man has allowed to rule. He has to allow consequences to choices that are made, including man’s choice of empowering and enthroning the enemy.

But break into the matrix he does. 

In a wonderful act of sabotage, God breaks into humanity and becomes a man. 

Believing God

The Bible talks a lot about faith. It puts a huge emphasis on faith in relation to our relationship with God. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that it is the bedrock, the foundation of relationship with God. “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” it says. (Hebrews 11:6).

What is faith? At the heart of it, it is about believing who God says he is, believing that he does what he says he does (even when there is little or no proof to support it). The writer of the book of Hebrews puts it succinctly: “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” It is more than deciding to believe a particular idea. It is certainly more than deciding to believe something because we wish it to be true. It is a sure hope, a hopeful certainty, a deep trust ... and it is allowing that faith to shape our thoughts, our words and our actions. True faith always translates into action.

If God, out of Love has to judge our choices, but if God out of Love equally allows a time of grace, a time in which we can re-align ourselves, our lives and our decisions, with his Love, faith plays a huge part in how we choose to live. We have to act out of faith and not by what we see in the immediate. We have to “live by faith and not by sight”. We choose how we live not because we can see who God is and what he is like, but because we believe him and fully trust that he is who he says he is. 

So faith, acting out of a trust in God even if the evidence is unseen, acting out of trust in what God has said even if humanly speaking the odds are against you, becomes the basis of a relationship with God.

Relationship with God, responding to God’s Love, is always and has always been a matter of faith. But as in any relationship, God doesn’t wait until our faith is perfect. He takes whatever response towards him we have, however small – and he meets us more than half way. With every step that we deepen in our trust of Him, his character and his promises, he draws us deeper into him. Every time we choose to trust him a bit deeper, he reveals a little bit more of Himself to us.

We see this again and again in the lives of people depicted in the Bible. The Bible is full of the stories of ordinary people who choose to believe that God is who he says he is. They choose to believe that when God promises, he keeps his word and does what he promises to do. And it is through their response to God in faith, believing God translated into action, that God works in and through them in extraordinary ways.

The Bible is very clear that it is the faith of these people, not what they achieved and did, that is of value to God. It is their faith, their response to God even against the odds, that is the basis of their relationship with God and the reason God is able to enter into and deepen in His relationship with them. It is faith that saves us from this broken world we live in.

Faith matters.

God’s mitigating grace

So we live in a world where we are allowed free will and where we experience the consequences of our choices. Sometimes the choices we make are neither here nor there. At other times, the choices we make change our lives (for better or worse). Sometimes it is not easy to make good choices. Sometimes making a poor choice is the easier option. The consequences are nevertheless real. Sometimes we can’t see clearly what the best choice is and we feel we are forced to make our choices in the dark. Sometimes we don’t realise that we are making choices, especially when it comes to our attitudes and responses towards situations. Nevertheless, consequences follow the choices we make irrespective of the extenuating circumstances.

We also live in a world where other people are equally allowed free will and where we live in the wake of other people’s choices. We can see this all around us in our daily lives. Sometimes it isn’t a big deal. Sometimes living in the wake of other people’s choices is annoying and frustrating – someone’s bad parking for example. Sometimes we are forced to live in the wake of people’s choices against us, which make us angry, hurt us, even crush us. If God chooses to allow people their choices, he has to allow people their bad and evil choices as well.

But because God is Love, God gets involved in our lives in order to minimise the effect of evil. If invited to, he intervenes, mitigates and does not allow evil to wreak havoc unchecked. (I believe this is an important part of intercessory prayer – but that is for a different blog). At the end of the day, God is sovereign. Even though he will never betray his own character and act lovelessly, neither will be defeated by evil.

We can see God’s mitigating work, his grace, in the world today. When we look around, we see what a devastated place the world really is and how much evil and grief and pain and sadness and jealousy and struggle for power there is. But whilst there is a lot of evil at work, most of us would probably agree that there could be more. But God is at work, minimising, limiting, and mitigating the Evil One’s reign on earth.

Why does a God of Love allow so much suffering? How can a God of Love allow so much evil? There is no easy or glib answer for a question that has dogged humanity since the dawn of time. But perhaps it would help if we rephrased the question, if we started to look at it this way: if there were not a God of love, in a world full of sin, in a world full of death, in a world where the “Prince of this World” remains enthroned, how much more suffering would there be?

A God of Love and of grace

Because God is Love he is also a God of grace. He gives plenty of opportunity to respond to Him and to turn to his Love before the time of judgment comes. He gives plenty of opportunity to amend our ways in line with his Love and to learn to live according to his ways of Love. He has to allow the consequence for sin, but he also allows us time to avoid the full brunt of those consequences.

Judgment cannot follow choice immediately or on a consistent basis because the result would be conditioned response, rather than genuine choice. It is one thing to make decision in relation to outcome, something else to make a decision out of love.

If every time I make good choice I receive a blessing, I would quickly become conditioned to making that choice. I would no longer act in a way that reflected the genuine choice to love. I would be acting in response to the stimulus of blessing. Conversely, if every time I did something bad I received punishment or something bad happened to me, then I also will become trained and conditioned in my behaviour. I would avoid certain behaviour, not out of love, but to avoid punishment. (For how many of us, if we are honest, is avoiding punishment the basis of our relationship with God?) That type of conditioned behaviour, whether positive or negative, is not what God wants for a relationship or partnership with man. He wants and longs for a genuine love relationship.

And so God’s judgment can seem unpredictable and random. There are times all through history when God, in his wisdom, chooses to bring judgment, in line with the bigger picture, in line with his long-term plan for redeeming a broken world. But equally there are times throughout history when it appears that people have got away with it and that God has not judged. This can lead to confusion. This can lead man to interpret that God does not really mean what he says. If God is in the business of giving us choice and then giving us time to correct ourselves, it may appear as if God is not being completely fair. If God creates a universe where we can freely choose and then in grace and love acts to minimise the damage when we choose wrongly, it might look as if people are getting away with bad choices. If God has clearly outlined the consequence of a choice and that consequence is not immediate, then it might look as if God isn’t like he says he is. So God’s very kindness and very love can actually mask the fact that love also requires judgment. People begin to think that there is an excuse, that others have got away with it in the past and that they will too. 

But the truth is that because God is Love, he also judges. He has to allow us the consequences of our choices, and ultimately the consequences of our sin

A God of Love and of Judgment?

Many people struggle with the idea of a God of Love bringing punishment. How can a God of Love punish, even destroy, those he loves? We often think that a God of Love should not be a God who punishes.

When the Bible talks about punishment, it often does so in relation to judgment. Judgment is when God allows man his ‘final answer’ and so also the consequences that come with it. God’s judgment on someone is their punishment. Every time God punishes, he judges our choice in the matter.

Humanly speaking we find it very difficult to separate punishment from the sense that the person wronged is seeking justice or vindication or making someone suffer for the hurt they have caused. I wonder if it is so because (or when) we look at it in a legal, transactional way. Looking at punishment in a relational context, for example in a parent – child context, sheds a different light on it. There, punishment is more about correction than about vindication or justice.

If God is Love, if that means he is not able to act in any other way but out of Love, then when God punishes, it is always in a relational context. God does not punish because he is hell-bent on justice (excuse the poor pun!), or because God wants vindication, or because God is power crazy. When God punishes, it is because it is time for judgment, time for the ‘final answer’ in relation to someone’s response to God. The Old Testament is full of examples of this.

Judgment is simply the consequence of the choices we make in relation to God’s Love, our response to God’s love. If there are different outcomes to our choices, a God who is Love must ultimately allow our ‘final answer’ and bring judgment. For a choice to be meaningful, and not simply a response to stimulus, God has to allow different outcomes for the choices we make and ultimately allow the consequence of the choice. There has to be a point at which an objective judge would say this choice leads to this outcome, and this choice to another. Love and judgment then are not incompatible but inevitable consequences of one another. Because he always acts out of love he has to judge. (As does a good parent).

The consequence of sin

If God is Love, if God forgives us, why does God seem to insist on punishment for sin? Can he not just let it go? Why does sin have to be punished? Can God not forgive without having to have some sort of vindication? And if sin does have to be punished, why is the consequence of turning away from God death? Could there not be a less drastic consequence? If God is Love and therefore allows us our choices, why does he punish us if we choose not to respond to his Love?

Every choice we make entails consequences. The consequences of some choices are neither here nor there, for example what food to choose from a menu or whether to watch TV or a movie instead. On the opposite end of the sliding scale, the consequences of other choices significantly affect and shape our lives (and the lives of others), for example who we choose to marry (or not), where we choose to live or which career we choose to pursue.

Choosing to remain turned away from God (to whatever extent), choosing to act according to the sinful strongholds in our lives and according to Satan’s pattern, is to choose significant consequences.

The Bible does talk about punishment.

Sometimes when the Bible talks about punishment, it actually talks about consequences. Because God is Love he has to allow us our choices, which includes the inevitable consequences of those choices.

Death is the inevitable consequence of what happens when we are turned away from God. Just as we are unable to receive God’s Love while being turned away from him, so we are unable to receive his Life. Death is the absence of life. The ultimate consequence of sin is death because we will never be able to receive God’s Love and the Life that stems from his Love if we remain turned away from him if we persist in rejecting him. It is really important to understand that it is not so because God is so angry with us that he is rejecting us or because a particular sinful act merits a drastic punishment. It is so because where God’s life is absent there is death and any sinful act carries with it the hallmarks of death. When we live turned away from God (to whatever degree), when we act accordingly, when we sin, something dies and we empower the enemy to act against us.

There are times however when the Bible does talk about punishment and about what God chooses to do in the face of man’s individual or collective rejection of God or in the face of actions that blatantly oppose God’s way of Love. If God is Love however, when he chooses to punish, he is not doing so out of vengeance, to vindicate himself or because he has an overly acute sense of requiring “justice” to be done. I believe that because God is Love, he forgives liberally and unconditionally and not only after justice has been done. But because God is Love he chooses not to turn a blind eye when our actions and attitudes fly in the face of who he is, of his character. In that sense he cannot leave sin unpunished.

Perhaps looking at it from a parenting point of view helps us to understand where God is coming from. Parents love their children with a deeper love than they ever thought possible. When the children choose not to listen to the parents’ instruction and they disobey, sometimes there is an inevitable consequence, for example a cut from a sharp knife. Sometimes when they choose not to listen to the parents’ instruction, parents impose a consequence. A good parent allows punishment not because they feel hurt and want vindication, not because they want to get their own back, or because they want the child to know just how upset they have made the parent, or because they want justice above all. A good parent is actually incredibly selfless. Good parents allow punishment in order to help the child learn, in order to enable to child to understand the significance of their action and in order to help the child mature into an adult who can exercise self-discipline and live a life of integrity.

The law

If sin is essentially about the condition of our hearts, if sin is essentially about our response (or lack of it!) to God’s Love which consequently colours our behaviour, what then is the point of the Ten Commandments? Why does God bother giving his people a code of conduct, why is there a 'law', if conduct isn't really the point?

it seems to me that the law is essentially a description of what life looks like if we really were to live in the light of God’s Love, if our actions and our behaviour were defined by his Love. I have to be honest and admit that there are many aspects about 'the law' as it is written in the Old Testament that I simply don’t get. To my sanitised Western ears some laws come across rather gruesome and rather harsh and can make us question whether God really is Love. I am sure there are scholars who have studied the context of the culture at the time and who therefore have a better understanding of particular laws and can give explanations.

Nevertheless, to a simple mind like me, judging by what the law describes and judging by the way it is summed up even within the books of the law themselves and then significantly by Jesus, it still seems to me that the point of the law is to describe what behaviour determined by Love is like. The ‘law’ that overarches all of them, according to Jesus and according to Moses is: Love the Lord your God with all your heart ...

However, the Bible equally makes it very clear that living according to the law is not ‘it’. Living according to the law is not what produces relationship with God. A married couple could be living completely according to what a marriage should be like, according to the ‘laws of marriage’ if you like. But unless there is a bond of love, unless what they actually do is coloured by their love, it is meaningless. Living according to the God’s ways without the context of a relationship is equally meaningless. It is only if we have a meaningful love relationship with God because we have turned to him that living according to the law he gave makes any sense. 

Jesus often disputed with the religious leaders about this. “In the law it says you should not kill. Well, I tell you that if you hate your brother you have already broken the law.” “In the law it says you should not commit adultery. I am telling you, it goes deeper than that. If you look lustfully at a woman really you have already broken the law, even though you have not physically committed the act of adultery.” “It is not what goes into a person which makes him unclean, but what comes out of a person.” “Out of the overflow of man’s heart his mouth speaks.” His point is clear. It is always a matter of the heart.  

Paul explains that the point of the law is to highlight the fact that none of us live Love's way. For all of us, our behaviour is not always entirely infused by love. The law shows us how we all fall short of God’s standard and miss the mark of his Love. Because there is a law we become aware that there is more, that we have somehow fallen short. In that sense, the law condemns us. Yet while the law points out our shortcomings, God doesn’t! He is not surprised by our short falling.  He knows that without the indwelling of his Love in us we always fall short - yet he doesn’t hold that against us. He forgives us. In fact, because he is Love, he wants us to see that of our own efforts we cannot live defined by Love. None of us can keep the law! He wants that realisation to inspire us to seek Him with all our hearts, to open our hearts fully to him, to his Love and to allow it to transform us.

Missing the mark of His Love

The state of a heart turned away from God inevitably affects how we live life and the choices we make. Sin has huge repercussions in our lives, to whatever extent we are turned away from God. We are only able to receive God’s Love according to the extent our hearts are turned towards him and the extent our hearts are open to receive it. Similarly, his Love only begins to affect our values and our behaviour according to the extent to which we have received God’s Love.

In a sense sin is a bit like a cancer that spreads through the body, to use a medical analogy. As we turn away from God, as we reject his Love and cut ourselves off from His Love, the cancer of un-love (self-centredness, greed, egotism, rebellion against God’s Love) becomes embedded in our hearts. The more the ‘cancer’ progresses, the clearer the symptoms. The more lovelessness takes root in our hearts, the more our values and then our behaviour are affected by it.

The more we remain turned away from God, the more we expose ourselves to Satan’s patterns of self-centredness, of jealousy, of greed, of wanting to be our own master. Strongholds begin to form in our hearts: our responses become habits, habits in turn become so deep-seated that they establish themselves as strongholds in our lives. Our responses, our habits, the strongholds that have established themselves in our hearts determine the choices we make and affect our behaviour.

And so sin, as well as being the state of our hearts in relation to God, is very much our actions. Our behaviour cannot be divorced from the state of our hearts, just as the symptoms of an illness cannot be divorced from the illness itself. When we behave in a way that misses the mark of his glory, that misses the mark of God’s way of Love, we sin. Behaviour that is not rooted in God’s Love is sinful. And because none of us truly allow God’s Love to infuse us and mould us and shape us, we are all sinful. We all fall short of living in the light of God’s Love.

The way I understand it, sin, then, is not about not being good enough because our actions don’t match up to God’s standards. It is not about failing to reach a particular standard because our efforts are not good enough, because we aren’t trying hard enough. Sin is falling short of God’s character (I guess that could be seen as failing to reach God’s standard) not because we have tried and failed, but because we are not living in the light of God’s Love, we are not fully saturated by it which ultimately affects our thoughts, our attitudes and our deeds. 

For me it has been crucial and incredibly liberating to get this the right way round: it is not specific (mis)deeds that make me sinful – rather it is the sinful state of my heart that causes my specific (mis)deeds. My sinful behaviour, the things we I wrong, the way I fall short of God's ways, is the outworking of not allowing God’s Love to fully penetrate my life.

Falling short of God’s glory

In spite of everything I have said previously about sin being the state of our hearts rather than the sum of the ‘bad’ things we do, the Bible seems to put plenty of emphasis on right behaviour and behaviour that goes against God’s ways. If sin is essentially the condition of our hearts, why then does the Bible talk a lot about sin in terms of behaviour?

Perhaps it is helpful to see human behaviour as a set of three concentric circles, one inside the other. Right in the middle, at the centre of everything, is the heart. Not the physical heart of course, but the seat of that which governs us. The condition of our heart affects our values (the next concentric circle) which in turn affects and directs our behaviour (the last and outer concentric circle).  Our actions are always defined by our values and the condition of our hearts. Jesus spoke truth when he said that out of the overflow of our heart, our mouth speaks and that that which we treasure will define who we are and what we do.

The meaning for the word “sin” is actually “to miss the mark”. According to the Bible, we have all missed the mark. Which mark have we missed? I grew up believing that it is the mark of his perfect standards we have missed. The Bible however says that we have all missed the mark of His glory. (Romans 3:23) What is God’s glory? Is it his perfection? Is it his holiness (which many understand to mean his separateness and his intolerance of the things we do wrong)? Is someone’s glory not that which makes them great? If God is Love, is his glory not simply his nature, his character, the essence of who he is? Is it not his Love in all its fullness that marks him out, that makes him different to everything else, that makes him glorious and that therefore is his glory?

For me it is helpful to understand it in this way: we have all missed the mark of God’s wonderful and unconditional Love. We fall short of living in the fullness of it and according to it! When we turn away from God, when we live turned away from him, we are unable to receive his Love. Not because he withholds it, but because we refuse (or do not allow ourselves) to receive it. His Love is not able to touch our hearts. It is not able to shape our values and our behaviour follows suit. If we refuse to respond to his Love, if we remain turned away from him, he is simply not able to build the relationship with us that he longs to have because God never forces himself on us. But so we fall short of his glory, his Love. And so our sin, the state of our hearts that are turned away from Him cuts us off from Him.

Because God is Love, he never stops pouring his Love in our direction. He continues to extend his Love to us. Sometimes it only warms the back we have turned to him. But as we begin to turn towards him, even a tiny bit, his Love begins to touch us, which has direct repercussions on our values and later on our behaviour.

I expect there are not that many people who live fully and completely turned towards God, fully basking in the light of his Love, fully saturated by his Love. Perhaps Jesus is the only one. Most of us are probably partially turned to God to one or other degree. We partially allow his Love to enter our hearts; our values and our behaviour are partially touched by his Love. 

I believe God delights in every degree that we turn to him and meets us accordingly. Yet he also constantly invites us into deeper, invites us to turn towards Him in a fuller and deeper measure so that his Love is able to saturate our hearts in increasing measure. It is only in this way that our lives become truly full. 

Separated from God

I believe that God is Love. In my experience, God, because he is Love, desires a love relationship above all and extends the offer of a love relationship with him to us all. So I spent a lot of time re-thinking sin in the light of God’s character of Love and in the light of what the Bible says about sin.

I have to confess that I now see things rather differently. It is not that I don’t believe what the Bible says anymore. I do! But when I read the Bible now, I no longer equate sin as the sum of the things I have done wrong. The way I understand it now, sin goes a lot deeper than our behaviour. Essentially sin describes the state of our heart, the condition of our hearts when it is not touched by God’s Love.

Sin is a big deal. There is never any question about that. Sin does indeed cut us off from God. But not because God puts conditions on our acceptability. Sin does not cut us off from God because God cannot tolerate behaviour that goes against his nature or because our behaviour somehow disgusts Him, making him turn away from us, or because our sin somehow contaminates Him and thus forces him to cut himself off from us. Sin cuts us off from God because when we are turned away from Him and from his Love, there simply is no connection.

Just as the side of the earth turned away from the sun is in darkness and unable to receive the sun’s light, so a human heart turned away from the God of Love is in sin and unable to receive the light of His Love.

When the Bible talks about sin separating us from God, I believe it doesn’t mean that our behaviour per se is unacceptable to God and therefore creates a barrier between him and us. If sin is a barrier between us and God, it stems from our rejection of him, from our turning our backs on him, figuratively speaking. Two people cannot have a meaningful relationship if one of them has their back turned toward the other. You can’t relate closely to someone, you can’t receive from someone, nor can you give to someone if you have your back turned to them. There is no meaningful connection when someone has their back turned towards you. In a similar way we cannot have a meaningful relationship with God if we are turned away from him. And so our turning away from him becomes a barrier, separating us from him. Our turning away from God, our rejection of him, is what the Bible calls sin. There are lots of reasons why we deliberately turn away from God. Perhaps the most profound reason is that we don’t really trust him, so we don’t believe he is who he says he is and so we don’t want to submit to his ways. We much prefer to do things our way and in a way that will benefit us. We want to be in the centre of our own existence. We want “me” to be in the centre of our lives. We want things to revolve around our happiness and our satisfaction. Perhaps there is a sense in which we want to be like a god – in charge and with power over others. So at the heart of sin, at the heart of our turning our backs on God, is rebellion against God’s kingship and God’s rule.