Perfect

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Wednesday, July 31, 2019

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.  But I say, love your enemies!  Pray for those who persecute you!  In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.  For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.  If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that?  Even corrupt tax collectors do that much.  If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?  Even pagans do that.  But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.  Matthew 5:43-48

We are called to be different.  It is certainly different to act in a loving way to those that hate you and describe themselves as your enemies!  But that is the kind of love we see on the cross, where Jesus prayed, Father, forgive them.

C.S. Lewis wrote:  There is no safe investment.  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.  The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.[2]

There are plenty of people we have all met that we would rather leave off the guestlist; but that isn't the way it works.  When we find ourselves in that condition we must work at finding ways to love, and even as far as liking!

Chuck Swindoll tells a great story of the man who fell in love with an opera star:

He hardly knew her, since his only view of her was from the third-floor balcony.  But he was convinced he could live happily ever after married to anyone who sang like she did.  He scarcely noticed that she was much older than he.  Nor did he note the limp.  Her mezzo-soprano voice would carry them through anything!  After a whirlwind romance and a hurry-up ceremony they were off for the honeymoon. As she began to prepare for their first night together, his chin dropped to the floor when she plucked-out her glass eye and plopped it into a container on the nightstand.  She pulled off her wig, ripped off her false eyelashes, yanked out her dentures, unstrapped her artificial leg, and smiled at him as she slipped off the glasses that hid her two hearing aids.  He was stunned and horrified.  But he managed to blurt out, Sing, woman; for goodness sake, SING!"[3]

For You Today

We are called to perfection in love.  But we are far from perfect people.  This is not a perfect world, you don’t belong to a perfect church family, we will never see it so until Jesus comes back to clean up the mess.

But, for now....When it comes to the brother or sister in your church that you have a hard time with, sing, Christian, sing! 

When your unbelieving neighbor upsets you, sing, Christian, sing! 

And when the last thing on your mind is reconciling, or denying self, or keeping your vows sacred, or forbearing...sing, Christian, sing!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

Go to VIDEO

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com        Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves  Image, Ibid.

[3] Image:  By Srđan Doroški - Serbian National Theatre, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Soft Pillow of Unbelief

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Friday, February 5, 2016

VIDEO

Exalt the Lord our God!  Bow low before his feet, for he is holy!  Moses and Aaron were among his priests; Samuel also called on his name.  They cried to the Lord for help, and he answered them.  He spoke to Israel from the pillar of cloud, and they followed the laws and decrees he gave them.  O Lord our God, you answered them.  You were a forgiving God to them, but you punished them when they went wrong.  Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at his holy mountain in Jerusalem, for the Lord our God is holy!   Psalm 99:5-9^(NLT)

There is a common statement I have heard over the years by people who are largely ignorant of what God’s Word declares:

I just find it hard to believe that a loving God would reject people and send them to Hell.

The premise in that statement is that “love” never includes “punishment” but is always a soft place to land.  And if God is one who does send people to a devil’s hell who are simply victims of some unfortunate lifestyle choices – well, we don’t need that kind of God.  We want a God who has a soft pillow for us to land on.

The Psalmist points-out rather clearly that God is not anything like that kind of God.  In rehearsing Israel’s cycle of being oppressed, crying out to God, being forgiven, and then ignoring the God who saved them, the writer shows the cycle of sinful impunity with which we humans treat holy God.  We want his love, forgiveness and deliverance, but we scoff at the idea that we will be punished for disobedience.

Universalism (which is belief that there is no hell or punishment, and everyone will experience God’s forgiveness, and ultimately live for eternity in heaven) is categorically-rejected by orthodox Christianity. 

The main problem with universalism being a natural result of the unconditional love of God is that the two are mutually exclusive.  Unconditional love, expressed by the grace of God in Christ being crucified for our sins clearly destroys the notion that everybody goes to heaven; rather it sets-up a conditional response or rejection of God’s grace-gift. 

Ephesians 2:8 declares this:

God saved you by his grace when you believed.  And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.

When you believed is the phrase which is the conditional part of unconditional love.  Universalism skips over the requirement of receiving the gift of grace; rather it just credits the grace of God as something that our Creator will bestow upon us no matter how we act. 

That is like a child imagining his behavior is entirely his choice – he can be self-absorbed and dismiss any responsibility for his actions.  And, with free will it is like that; you really do have the right to be a nitwit – but you end up a nitwit.   In that sense, universalism denies the end result of choices.

In the Church these days, there are those who make sinful lifestyle choices, and those who are steeped in sinful practices, who are looking for legitimization; they want to be accepted.  They want their sin baptized, sanctified, ordained and even lauded as holy.

They want a soft pillow for their unbelief.

It may happen for a while on earth; it will never be accepted in heaven.

For You Today

When you try to bend the Scripture to say what you wish it would, you do not so much “break” the commandments; but you will break yourself on them.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…and have a blessed day!

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[1] Title image: By PenCooper93 (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons