The Better Thing: Jesus

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” 

(Matt. 11:28-30).

            Who is Jesus inviting into His rest in these verses?  Perhaps we first think of non-believers, burdened by sin, needing the rest that can only come from knowing Jesus.  This is certainly true.  But Jesus is especially addressing disciples in this verse, for no one can know Him or find rest unless they first take His yoke.  It is the church, the yokefellow of Christ, that most needs to take these words to heart.

            We have accepted a great self-deception in the church: we have made salvation the finish line instead of the starting line.  Based on this faulty premise, we neatly divide humanity into two groups: those who know the Lord (us) and those who don’t (the world).  While this is partly true, it isn’t the whole picture.  As followers of Jesus, we are called disciples.  The word disciple means, “learner.”  We need to know the Lord just as much as non-believers.  Now that we have taken Jesus’s yoke, we are learning Him.  Now that we are born again, we are growing into a mature man (Eph. 4:13).  The evidence that we are knowing Him and are maturing in Him is that we are entering into His rest (Heb. 4:3, 10).

            But have we really laid down our wearisome burdens?  Or have we just exchanged them for others?  Perhaps some lay down the burden of sin only to take up the burden of religious behavior.  Perhaps the pressure to achieve is merely redirected toward ministry rather than left on the cross.  Maybe we give up the responsibility of pleasing man only to take on the responsibility of pleasing God.  And instead of “keeping up with the Jones-es” maybe we drive ourselves to keep up with whatever church has a book on the bestseller list (Eph. 4:14).  Jesus said of the Pharisees, “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders” (Matt. 23:4).  Likewise, there are those who greet us with a handshake and a ball and chain when we gather on Sunday.  If we have merely given Christian packaging to worldly burdens then we aren’t accepting Jesus’s yoke or learning Him at all.

            Jesus has a simple message for His body, the church: “Lay down the burdens of human religion.  Lay down the burdens of Christian culture.  Know Me, and rest in Me!”  Psalm 46 says it this way: “Cease striving, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations.”  To know Him requires that we trade Christianity for Christ, that we give up our harried serving to sit at His feet (Luke 10:41, 42).  Only one thing is needed, and that is Jesus Himself (Luke 10:42; Mark 10:21).  If we choose “the better thing,” it will not be taken away (Luke 10:42). 

A Single Stone

            David used only one stone to defeat Goliath and the entire Philistine army (1 Sam. 17:49, 50).  One stone set right the many blasphemies Goliath shouted at God’s people day after day (1 Sam. 17:16, 23).  One stone redeemed  the disobedience of every Israelite soldier who did nothing to resist Goliath.  One stone was all God needed to save His people. 

            Likewise, Paul says that the act of one man—Jesus—brought grace to many.  One act of self-giving atoned for generations of selfishness and sin—past, present, and future.  One righteous life laid down swallowed up centuries of death and brought resurrection life to myriads of people.  One act of obedience compensated for countless acts of disobedience committed by billions of people every day in every age (Rom. 5:15-21).

            Considering the awesome, far-reaching, unending power of Jesus’s death and resurrection, can we not trust Him with our own failings, whether committed years or minutes ago?  Can we not face that which is fallen, that which is satanic, and echo David’s words to Goliath: “I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, who died and rose again, whom you have defied.  THIS DAY, the Lord will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down by the power of His cross (1 Sam. 17:45, 46).

Seeing for Ourselves

My wife and I moved from Texas to Washington in March of 2000.  Just before moving, we went to our Wednesday night prayer meeting.  Someone was sharing about how Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ and was sent to tell the disciples about the One she had seen (John 20:17, 18).  As I listened, the Lord said to me, “I have called you to be this type of messenger.”  Like Mary, the Lord has sent me to tell disciples about the One I have seen.  Mind you, I haven’t seen Jesus physically.  But we are not to know Him that way any longer (2 Cor. 5:16).  It is with the eyes of our hearts we are to see Jesus, and this is really the only way to see Him (Eph. 1:17, 18).  The gospels show that even people who saw the Lord physically didn’t know Him.  They only knew Him when revelation happened in their hearts (Matt. 16:15-17; Luke 24:15, 16, 30, 31). 

Over the years, my understanding of this calling has grown.  Not long after moving to Washington, I returned to the passages about Jesus sending Mary to the disciples.  As I read Luke’s account (in which several women accompany Mary), one part stood out to me: “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24:11; Mark 16:9-14).  I was caught off guard that the disciples didn’t believe the message brought by Mary and the others.  At that point, I understood that, sent by Jesus or not, I shouldn’t expect everyone to believe me or to receive what I said.  Even as I write, I am reminded that women didn’t enjoy the social standing that men did at that time and were not taken seriously in important matters.  My own experience has shown that some people won’t respect me or listen to me because of my personality, my level of education, the way I dress, and 1,000 other things that lower my status in their minds.  I have even been snubbed by ministers because I am not in “full-time” ministry, a fact that makes me less valid in their eyes.  But God is not impressed by the markers of prestige that we think give us the right to judge.  So instead of first appearing to people who might be respected Jesus appeared to a group of women whom He knew would be dismissed. 

While the disciples didn’t believe Mary, some, like Peter and John, at least went to see for themselves if what she said was true.  As we know, they found Jesus’s tomb empty and eventually saw Him themselves.  This is my greatest hope when I share the Lord.  I can’t expect anyone to listen to me or believe me but if I can make someone curious enough to look for Jesus themselves, and if they see Him by revelation, then that is better than being listened to or respected.  Listening to me won’t help a single person.  What each of us most needs is to see Jesus ourselves.  How can we do this?  Paul says if we set our hearts on Christ, God will remove the veil blinding our hearts, and we will see Jesus in the scriptures.  As we know Jesus in this way, the Holy Spirit will transform us into His likeness (2 Cor. 3:14-18; Luke 24:45, 46).  To the degree that we have been transformed in this way, the life of Jesus manifests in us, and we can see Jesus in each other as well (2 Cor. 4:10, 11). 

           Seeing Jesus and being transformed into His likeness is my first calling, even above preaching Him to others.  After all, if He isn’t seen in me, there is no message to preach, and there is quite enough of that going on amongst Christians already.  Instead, I believe the Lord has called me—and every one of us—to be a message and not merely preach one.   

Rejecting the King of Kings

“But when they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD.  And the LORD told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king’” (1 Sam. 8:6, 7).

“‘Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.  ‘We have no king but Caesar,’ the chief priests answered.  Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified” (John 19:15, 16).

            Israel asked for a king and was told the king they chose would take and take and take (1 Sam. 8:10-18).  Contrasting this with the Lamb of God—who gave until His body was broken and His blood spilled—gives us a sense of what Israel lost when they rejected God as their king.  They traded a God who loved them for a king who loved himself at their expense.  Why would anyone do this?  It is quite simple.  We must submit to a king.  Despite the bankruptcy and enslavement that comes with the king we choose, we prefer him because we prefer to submit to a reign which authorizes us to love ourselves first.  If we submit to God and accept His rule, we must give as we have been given to, we must love as He has loved us (John 15:12).  “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).  To choose another king is really to choose self as king.

            The self-king always calls for the extinction of the God-king.  Those who traded Christ for Caesar screamed for Jesus’s crucifixion (John 19:6, 15).  Saul sought David’s life unrelentingly (1 Sam. 19:1).  Self is a dictator, par excellence.  It can admit no competitor, no rival.  Saul allowed David to rise in prominence and to excel as long as he was a benefit and made Saul look good.  But the moment his reign was threatened, his murderousness manifested (1 Sam. 18:8-11). 

            Whether we follow the self-king or the God-king, our path will lead to the cross.  But which king we serve will determine if we are those shouting, “Crucify him!” or those who are silent before their accusers.  

Masquerade

Human religion is God’s greatest enemy and Satan’s greatest instrument in his assault on God & God’s people.  Human religion is not just non-Christian faiths or certain Christian denominations.  It is found in varying degrees in every Christian church just as Christ is.  More pointedly, human religion is found in every person’s heart (Matt. 15:18, 19).  It is the sinful nature’s attempt to be spiritual.

Regardless of where it presents itself, human religion puts itself in God’s place.  Consequently, it cannot tolerate when God or His true representatives show themselves.  The exposure of its charade, its counterfeiting, and its hypocrisy cannot be countenanced or it will lose all the control, self-worship, and parasitic preservation secured by its ruse.  So called “clergy” are certainly to blame as perpetrators of the power structure of human religion, the façade which keeps people from entering the kingdom because it poses as the gate (Matt. 23:13).  But human religion can’t exist without a laity which can be appealed to by leaders who justify the rule of self, the religion of the stomach, and enmity with the cross of Christ (Php. 3:18, 19).  To these and to all Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23, 24). 

            We cannot serve Christ and human religion.  We must choose.  While Christ and human religion coexist (not only in churches but in ourselves) they will be drawn inexorably into conflict, and we will be on one side or the other—laying our lives down in Christ’s image or thinking we offer service to God even as we attack those who are His flesh and blood (1 John 3:11-16; John 16:2). 

“[F]or Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.  It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:14, 15). 

            One final consideration: The first murder was religiously motivated.  Cain offered God the best fruit his talents and effort could produce.  God rejected his offering but accepted Abel’s—an animal from his flock.  John tells us Cain murdered Abel because “his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous” (1 John 3:12).  The counterfeiter couldn’t tolerate the existence of the authentic.  Cain and Abel demonstrate one of the basic differences between human religion and Christ.  Cain’s “gospel” is that of human religion: work hard for God and give Him your best.  Abel had nothing of himself to offer.  Instead, he offered another life from his flock, which God accepted.  Cain says it’s about being good enough.  Abel says someone else must die for us.  Human religion heaps burdens on men which it won’t lift a finger to carry itself (Matt. 23:4).  Christ, who lays down His life for us, says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

Prescribed for His Dwelling

1 Sam. 2:29—“Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my dwelling?  Why do you honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering…?”

“Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering…by fattening yourselves…?”

The house of Eli scorned and dishonored God’s sacrifice because they fattened themselves.  They violated Christ, in type.  “This is how we know what love is—Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16).  John shows us that the reality of love (and God IS love, so this is the very person of God) is demonstrated and known in Christ’s sacrifice.  This is the very essence of God, to which John adds, “And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers as well.”  Instead of fattening ourselves, serving ourselves, and pursuing our own interests, instead of scorning the person of God in Christ’s sacrifice, God would have us love, lay down our lives for our brothers, and honor the offering of the Son.  After all, the Lord also describes it as, “the sacrifice and offering prescribed for my dwelling,” showing that we—the church and temple—are the place where Christ, God’s offering, resides and remains.  What a violation it is, then, if self is preferred among us when God intends us to be the very house of His sacrificial love.  This was the sin of which Eli’s house was guilty: they were to be the temple of the Lamb but enshrined personal gratification.  “For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.  Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.  Their mind is on earthly things” (Php. 3:18, 19).  We are of the house of Eli to the extent we are motivated by our appetite for earthly things.  These can be sinful things, but in Philippians, Paul is referring to those who took pride in their religious piety.  The house of Eli, too, were priests who did not merely gratify themselves, but used their spiritual positions to that end (1 Sam. 2:12-17).

God has designated His church as the dwelling of Jesus—His sacrifice and offering.  This is what we are, this is our calling, the reason that we have been set apart as a unique people.  Not long after the above words were spoken to Eli, the ark of the covenant was captured, and God’s glory departed from Israel (1 Sam. 4:21).  We too will live apart from God’s glory if we scorn His sacrifice: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Rom. 8:17).  To think that we have any purpose other than suffering with Him and sharing in His glory is self-pleasing deception and opportunism.   Lord, let the glory and sacrifice of your Son shine through us!    

He Has Done It!

Hebrews 11 is known as the faith chapter or “The Hall of Faith” and is a list of deeds done by Old Testament saints.  Many of us privately define faith as the effort required to remain convinced of what is essentially unreal.  However, this is not faith, nor is it spiritual; it is an attempt to manufacture feelings of certainty.  Such “faith” does not build the house of God, it only builds a house of cards, something threatened by every wind of emotion or circumstance.

What, then, is faith?  The translation of Hebrews 11:1 in my Greek dictionary is, “Now faith is the realization or reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.”  This means faith is the same “stuff” as the unseen things for which we are hoping.  When we believe, we get a piece of reality, not just a whiff of possibility.  When we believe, spiritual things are made real, or are realized in us.  This is why Hebrews 11 is full of things people did.  Unseen things were being realized in them.  More to the point, perhaps we could call these acts of faith the making flesh of what is unseen.  

            What, then, is the unseen reality made flesh in the deeds of the saints?  The crucified Christ unlocks the unseen reality manifested in the faith of the saints.  By grasping this reality, Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain because his offering was in the image of Christ’s offering to come.  The ark built by Noah prefigured Christ’s death and resurrection (1 Peter 3:20, 21).  When Joseph’s bones were taken from Egypt to the promised land, this also foreshadowed the resurrection.  Similarly, by faith, Rahab marked her window with the scarlet thread, predicting the saving blood of Christ.  This isn’t to say that each of these understood, with utter clarity, that the death of a Jew in the first century AD would be their salvation.  What can be said is that these saints, by faith, touched something of spiritual reality in Christ and allowed their lives to be shaped by that reality. 

            We tend to see the scriptures as divided into different subjects or stories.  When we read Hebrews 11 from this point of view, we walk away having little sense of what is spiritually real or what it means to live by faith.  Our only sense may be of a multiplicity of promises.  Why God spoke all these different things to people we don’t know.  All we know is that God says different things to different people at different times (this is starting to sound like Hebrews 1:1!), and they believe Him.  Yet, the scriptures don’t teach us to see the many promises of God as ends in themselves but as leading to Christ.  “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:20).  God’s goal, then, in every promise, was/is to testify of His Son.

            In sum, each act of faith in Hebrews 11 somehow embodies Christ’s death and resurrection.  Chapter 12 begins with an image that perfectly encapsulates these things: we are running our own race of faith, joining with a great cloud of onlookers whose eyes are fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, the One crucified in the center of the coliseum of heaven and earth.  The cheer of the crowd that urges us on is not “You can do it!” but, “He has done it!”

If Anyone...

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself

and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

            At times, I am grieved because it seems that, for many believers, this verse means nothing.  Many of us are walking along with Jesus but have no idea what we’ve signed up for.  More importantly, we have no idea who it is we follow.  We’re part of the church because we grew up in it.  We’re involved because we’re pursuing our own ambitions in music, ministry, or whatever else interests us.  We think being religious is the right thing to do.  A thousand motives, a swarm of reasons, yet no inkling that we have been called to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily.  We take the name of our Husband but have no intention of following the Lamb wherever He goes (Rev. 14:4).  We call Him Master but find His example beneath us (John 13:15-17).   

            Jesus has only one destination throughout the gospels: the cross.  While He marches steadily closer to His end, the disciples get excited that the demons obey them, they try to one-up each other, they criticize those outside their group, they fight amongst themselves, they turn away people who need ministry, they pledge their unwavering devotion to Him.  Jesus’s entire focus is on Calvary.  The disciples are focused on everything but.  To put it another way, they are focused on all that Jesus is bearing to the cross for judgment.  Then, when the cross comes, the disciples scatter.  The cross reveals that their devotion is to many things besides Him, and in the shadow of its judgment, there is nothing left that binds them to Him.  

            God help us repent of being engrossed in things that God has judged (1 Cor. 7:31; 1 John 2:15, 16).  God help us repent of thinking God will be satisfied with anything less than our whole selves (Mark 10:17-22).  God help us see that any gospel which says, “Never!  The cross shall never happen to you!” does not have in mind the things of God but the things of men (Matt. 16:21-23).  God help us put aside our thoughts and our ways as we see His face set like flint toward the giving up of Himself (Luke 9:51).  “[L]et us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:1, 2).     

    

Nothing Less than Him

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

(John 1:1).

            Jesus is God’s complete self-expression or Word.  The Word is God, just as my word is me and not something other than me.  Jesus said it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks (Matt. 12:34).  Jesus is the abundance of God’s heart, the One in whom God’s most personal reality is known. 

            Hebrews 1:1 tells us that the crown of God’s self-revelation is His Son, who is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:1-3).  Jesus Himself told His disciples, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).  Hebrews show us that the message God has spoken in His Son supercedes prophets and their prophecies, supercedes the message spoken by angels, supercedes the revelation of Moses, supercedes the testimony of the tabernacle, supercedes the law, and the covenant of Mt. Sinai (Heb. 1:1, 2:2-4, 3:3, 9:11, 10:1, 12:18-24).  In short, Jesus is the full message of God to us.  Every other message that has been or will be is piecemeal and limited.  Hebrews warns that we can end up rejecting the Son because of devotion to God’s partial revelation through other avenues.  Note that these are not sinful things or false messages, but spiritual things that, while they serve God’s purpose, are nonetheless incomplete.  We would do well to heed this warning.  In the church today, Jesus is often shouted down by heralds of the miraculous, morality, spiritual warfare, spiritual gifts, the end times, holiness, revival, prosperity, faith, tradition, cultural relevance, and a million other messages.  Again, these things aren’t bad or satanic.  But in the end, whatever we preach other than Jesus is less than God’s full Word.

            John tells us that God’s complete self-expression, His Word, became flesh and dwelled among us (John 1:14).  He further says that God’s complete self-expression was heard, seen, and touched by those who knew Him (1 John 1:1).  This is mind-boggling.  Everything that God wanted us to know about Him walked among us, ate with us, showed us affection, talked with us.  That being the case, it still took an act of God to make us see His revelation in the Son (Matt. 16:15-17). 

            Our birth into spiritual life is accomplished when the Word enters into us.  Peter says we were born again by the living and enduring word of God (1 Peter 1:23).  John says God’s seed is in us (1 John 3:9).  We have received nothing less than God’s complete self-expression.  It is this One who indwells us.  Nevertheless, this reality remains veiled to us unless the Holy Spirit opens our eyes (2 Cor. 3:16-18).  Christ may be in us, but without the Holy Spirit’s ministry we will fail to recognize Him within just as people failed to recognize Jesus of Nazareth as God’s Christ when He walked the earth.  In Galatians chapter one, Paul says that God revealed Christ in Him so that he might preach Him.  Amen.  May we know God’s complete self-expression, His Word, by revelation, so that we might preach nothing less than Him.

The All and In All

In his third vision, Ezekiel sees all things made new. The old temple—into which was gathered all Israel’s sinfulness—is no more. Instead, there is a new temple, made without hands, purged of all idolatry (Ezek. 40-43). The people of Israel are new, as is their relationship with the Lord: “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever. The house of Israel will never again defile my holy name…by their prostitution and the lifeless idols of their kings….” (Ezek. 43:7). There is a new priesthood—the sons of Zadok (meaning, “Sons of righteousness”)—free of the unfaithfulness which characterized the priesthood of man (Ezek. 44:10-16). A new inheritance awaits the people of God (45:1-8, 47:13-48:29), and a new city whose name is “THE LORD IS THERE” (Ezek. 45:6, 48:15-22, 48:30-35). Here, all things are new, & all things are of God (2 Cor. 5:17, 18). This is reality in Christ. Through the cross (the destruction of the temple in Ezekiel’s second vision), old things were put away. No vestige of those things remain, just as Ezekiel sees no resemblance between the Israel in his vision & the Israel in captivity. We can remain in captivity through unbelief, or we can accept the overwhelming grace of God—all things have been made new in Jesus. By showing Ezekiel these things, God is hoping to draw his people—including those reading Ezekiel today—out of captivity. For we are captives to the extent we do not abide where all things are made new and are of God.

When we say all things are new, what do we mean? Let’s put it this way: imagine a world where every last thing is Christ: every river, every stone, every blade of grass. This is something like what Ezekiel’s third vision shows us. Christ is the temple and the glory within. He is the altar, He is the offering, He is the priest presenting the offering, He is the sacrificial flesh eaten by those who minister. He is the land and each inheritance marked out. He is the 12 tribes and the nation of Israel. The prince spoken of is the Prince of Peace. His Spirit is the river that makes everything live as it flows past trees of all kinds, which trees He is. “Christ is all, and is in all” (Col. 3:11). There is nothing in what Ezekiel sees that is not Christ. And this is where God has placed us. This is the One into which we have been baptized (1 Cor. 1:30, 12:13). Despite the conditions through which we sojourn, despite the lack of Christ we see around us and in us every day, God would have us know that our reality, the place where we live and move and have our being, is precisely this place where there is nothing but Christ, where Christ is the elemental composition of everything, where He is the length, the height, the breadth, and the depth (Eph. 3:18). “Christ is all, and is in all.”

I Hate Earth Day

The Lord has been exposing in me a fear of being seen as ignorant, out of touch, uneducated, backward, and the like. An underlying motivation in my presentation of Christ has been to show that Christianity is none of the negative stereotypes imposed on it. More importantly, I want to make sure people don’t think I fit those stereotypes. At bottom, my defense of Christianity is merely self-love. And really, we talk in this day and age as if stereotypes are always completely false when in reality there is often truth to them.

While bridge building is a legitimate calling within the church, so is being misunderstood, maligned, and rejected. Many in the church are perplexed by the world’s reaction to us and assume something must be wrong with the church or our presentation of the gospel. Many of us are busy polling our neighbors, finding out what offends or confuses, and trying to find the “holy grail” of cultural relevance that will end all dissonance with non-Christians. Others make it their mission to engage public debate, relate Christian faith to the latest scientific theories, and rub elbows with intellectuals of all stripes. Nevertheless, the world’s basic attitude toward Christianity is negative and many of us remain surprised by this.

But we shouldn’t be surprised. The scriptures say we should expect the world to hate us (John 15:18-25). We are told we shouldn’t expect the world to listen to us (1 John 4:5, 6). We are told to expect rejection (1 Peter 4:12; 2 Tim. 3:12). Despite all these admonitions, we wring our hands and wonder why all don’t speak well of us (Luke 6:26).

This isn’t to say the church is perfect. Historically, we have been guilty of social injustice, hypocrisy, child molestation, consumerism, and countless other things that betray the very heart of God. For our real failures we should take responsibility and show contrition as is fitting in Christ. But we often go way beyond this and lapse into co-dependently gauging the rightness of our course by the reactions of others. If people are flooding in and not leaving offended, we must be presenting the “real” Jesus. If people react negatively or with hostility, we assume something must be wrong with us and we anxiously set about to find how we’ve dropped the ball.

But we must consider this: Large crowds followed Jesus when He was handing out free food, healing people, preaching encouraging sermons, etc. But when He got to the heart of His teaching about the cross and communing in His broken flesh, everyone left but the twelve (John 6:66). We need to remember that “he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him” (Isaiah 53:2). In the end, the crowds we draw through our pleasanter ministries will be the same crowds calling for our crucifixion (Matt. 27:22). I am by no means suggesting we be bull-headed, insensitive, ignorant clods for Jesus. But we can never forget we are not of the world or that our place is ultimately with Jesus (John 17:14). “Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore” (Heb. 13:13).

I Belong to My Lover

“I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10).

Song of Songs is, on one level, about marriage & marital intimacy. But Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:31, 32 that marriage is about much more than simply marriage. It is a shadow of Christ & the church. Taking our cues from Paul, Song of Songs is about the intimate relationship to which we have been called in Christ.

I belong…

We know from verses such as 1 Peter 1:19 that we belong to God because he bought us with the precious blood of Jesus. But this is a merely legal ownership. Song of Songs speaks of an ownership based on mutual desire, a covenant in which both partners willingly forsake all others to belong to one another. Exodus 21:2-6 gives laws about Hebrew slaves and brings out the difference between these two types of ownership. By law, Hebrew slaves had to be released after serving 7 years. “But,” the law says, “if the servant declares, ‘I love my master…and do not want to go free’…he will be his servant for life” (Ex. 21:5,6). One slave serves his master then takes his freedom. Another gives up his freedom & himself out of love for his master. Many came to Jesus to be fed, healed, or delivered, then went their way. Ten lepers were healed but only one worshiped the Lord. Crowds thronged after Jesus but only 12 gave themselves to Him (Mark 10:28).
Another poor, but functional analogy would be buying a cat. Once we pay the price, the cat is released from her pet store cage & comes to our home. She belongs to us, but whether any affection or closeness develops is another matter. Likewise, we may be purchased, we may belong to Jesus, we may enjoy being fed by Him and reap the benefits of being in His household, but intimacy with Him is another matter. It is this belonging of intimacy that Song of Songs presents.

I belong to my lover…

I belong to my Lover—not to one who expects me to please him; not to the 10 commandments; not to ministries; not to a denomination. I belong to my Lover. I belong to Him who is so taken with me that He says, “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance from your eyes” (SOS 4:9). He is the King of kings. All authority in heaven and on earth rests with Him (Matt. 28:18). But I know Him in His chambers, where His kingly garb is gone, where His scepter is laid aside, where His commands are the kisses of His mouth (SOS 1:2).

I belong to my lover, and His desire is for me.

His desire is not for me to do something or be something. His desire is for me, period. Before His eyes, I am uncovered and laid bare, but He says, “All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you” (Heb. 4:13; SOS 4:7). His response to my nakedness is desire. There is no shame, no reproach. His arms enfold and cover me. His banner over me is love (SOS 2:4, 6).
We need to hear the viewpoint of our Lover: “Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens,” “your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely,” “Sixty queens there may be…but my dove, my perfect one, is unique” (SOS 2:2, 2:14, 6:8-9). Sometimes we may secretly feel that God merely tolerates us, that He is obligated to put up with us because of the blood of Jesus. We may acknowledge He loves us yet feel that we can’t be very appealing to Him. Song of Songs shows us that there is no such mixture in God’s thoughts toward us. His desire is for us. He wants us. He is head over heels in love, without reservation, without cold feet. Only by knowing the totality of His love for us will we be changed and love Him unreservedly in return (1 John 4:19).

The Crucified Yet Living Temple

Ezekiel’s temple shows us the nature of eternal life and of being the body of Christ. The temple bears the mark of the cross, a cross formed by the outer and inner gates which lead to the altar at the temple’s center. Living water flows from the Holy of Holies, where the glory of God dwells. We who are the temple and body of Christ have been crucified with Christ and bear the marks of the Lord Jesus (Gal. 2:20, 6:17). It is by the marks of the cross that Jesus is identified. Jesus’s disciples knew Him by these marks after His resurrection, and we who are raised with Him are now the body that carries this identifying characteristic. It is the mark of the cross, applied by the work of the Spirit in our lives, that shows we belong to Christ, not our confession of Christianity or our attendance at church. We have been raised with Him by the glory of the Father, and rivers of living water flow from our innermost being (Rom. 6:4; John 7:38, 39).
This is eternal life: being crucified and raised with Christ, being the temple in which the death and life of Jesus are revealed (2 Cor. 4:10, 11). Ezekiel’s temple also shows us that because death works in us, life works in others—the river flowing from the temple flows into the Dead Sea, and wherever it flows things live (Ezek. 47:8, 9; 2 Cor. 4:12).
The reality of Ezekiel’s temple must affect us deeply. It must be more than a mere teaching or idea, it must be more than theology. Jesus is not our collection of religious practices, beliefs, morality, and worldview. He is a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). He doesn’t want us to obey Him merely. He wants us to be His dwelling place. He doesn’t want servants who are unaware of His business but friends who share His business of laying down His life for His friends (John 15:12-15). Unless we understand and are about His business, there will be no life flowing from us into the sea of dead people around us. We cannot substitute evangelistic programs or missions campaigns for life. The difference is preaching the word versus people being able to see, hear, and touch the Word in us (1 John 1:1). The Holy Spirit must open our eyes to these things, and He must transform us according to the vision of Christ Ezekiel presents. As we are increasingly apprehended by the truth, there is no response but to cast our independent lives away in order to take our place in the temple which is crucified yet lives.

A Dragon in Lamb's Clothing

The Pharisees…. What was eating those guys? Rewind to the period between the Old and New Testaments—Alexander the Great brings many nations, including Israel, under Greek rule. His vision was to make all peoples culturally Greek. He was so successful that Greek culture persisted even after the rise of the Roman empire. In the time of Jesus, Greek was still the common language, and the New Testament itself was penned in Greek.
The Pharisees trace their roots to this period when the Greeks were pressing their cultural offensive. In Jerusalem, a handful of God’s people violently resisted Greek forces after one of their generals ordered that a pig be sacrificed in the temple. The Israelites routed Greek control of Jerusalem. In so doing they preserved their religious and ethnic heritage. Out of these military defenders of the faith, a priestly group emerged. These continued to resist Greek culture and to protect the faith of their fathers, though not through military means. This group evolved into the Pharisees, which means “separate.” Their zeal for Hebrew tradition and separateness from gentile cultures made them a social and religious force to be reckoned with.
The downside was that the posture of the Pharisees was defensive. They lost touch with God’s mission to draw all nations, not into Jewish culture, but into His kingdom. Instead of advancing the kingdom of God, the Pharisees were caught up in a culture-war. Ironically, their fight to preserve what was godly brought them into conflict with God, and they murdered His Son.
This fact should give us pause. As western culture becomes increasingly less Christian, many of us are guilty of reducing the mission of Christ to a culture-war. Is the culturally defensive posture we often take helping God? Does God need our help? Does protesting the removal of the 10 Commandments from a courthouse or picketing certain movies advance God’s kingdom? Jesus did not defend Himself against the Pharisees, against Herod, against Pilate. Does He now need us to defend Him?
Paul can teach us much in this regard. We don’t see him getting into cultural squabbles as he shares Christ. In Athens, he referenced Greek poetry and an altar to an unknown god while discussing the resurrection (Acts 17:23, 28). Though fully understanding that Christ was the end of the law, Paul submitted to a Jewish purification rite in the interest of reaching out to Jews (Acts 21:24-26). As he told the Corinthians, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor. 9:22).
One final consideration: Christianity dominated western culture for centuries, from 312 when Constantine made Christianity the state religion to modern times. Even when Christianity enjoyed the cultural ascendancy many are fighting for, western culture was not the kingdom of God. Instead, culturally-dominant Christianity was more like the beast in John’s vision: it looked like a lamb but spoke like a dragon (Rev. 13:11). Human culture is human culture, however much we may dress it up in Christianity. Scripture and history show us that a dragon in lamb’s clothing is the best we will come up with if we resort to culture wars. The alternative is to follow the true Lamb wherever He goes (Rev. 14:4).

LIP SERVICE

“…by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11).

Knowledge is not mentally or even spiritually apprehending truth. Knowledge is not related to a conceptual realm. Knowledge is what we do. Knowledge includes the apprehending and understanding of truth, but this is incomplete. Knowledge is only fully realized when we act. In Christianity we are to know God. What is knowing God? Knowledge is what we do, and God is love, so knowing God is love acted out. “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). Love is the test of knowledge. As Paul says, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge…but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2).As the above scripture from Isaiah says, Jesus justified many by His knowledge. What knowledge is being referred to, and how did it justify us? It is clear. His knowledge is the end of that same sentence: “…he shall bear their iniquities.” It is this love that Jesus invoked and obeyed unto death. That was His knowledge: an act of suffering, an act of bearing undeserved heartbreak and punishment, an act of emptying Himself. He knew something or, rather, someone—His Father. But what He did made the difference and showed He truly knew. Who did what his father asked in the parable? Not the one who agreed with his mouth but the one who agreed with his life (Matt. 21:28-31).

The Only Truth I Know

“I stand alone without beliefs. The only truth I know is you.”
—Paul Simon, “Kathy’s Song”

Paul Simon wrote the above lyric for a woman. “Kathy’s Song” is a love song par excellance. Yet every time I hear this line from the song, I cannot help but think of the Lord. Over the years I have believed many things—about faith, about spiritual authority, about the role of spiritual warfare, about church government, about prayer, and many other things. Some of these things have been helpful, some unhelpful, but at this point, the only truth I know is Jesus Himself. He is my first truth, and He is my last.
This is not to say that I reject all beliefs, doctrines, theologies. They are all, in a certain sense, lights in a dark place. But like stars at sunrise, they have faded as the day has dawned and the Morning Star has risen in my heart (2 Peter 1:19; Rev. 22:16). Teachings come and teachings go. Some outlast their usefulness, some are outgrown. But “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

“The crucified and yet living Christ is the concrete summing up of the Christian message and the Christian faith. He is Himself the wholly concrete truth of Christianity.”
—Hans Kung, On Being a Christian

The Man of Bloodshed and of Peace

Scripture describes David as a man of bloodshed and says, “The LORD gave David victory everywhere he went” (1 Chron. 18:6; 22:8). David indeed subdued all of Israel’s enemies during his reign so that Solomon inherited a kingdom at peace (1 Chron. 22:18). As a warrior, then, David spilled a lot of blood. But the Bible calls him a man of bloodshed for another reason. David foreshadowed Christ who shed His own blood to deliver us from every enemy which oppressed us that we may dwell in His peaceful kingdom.

By dying, Christ destroyed the devil, crucified the sinful nature with its desires, freed us from sin, crucified the world, and tasted death for everyone (Heb. 2:14; Gal. 5:24; Rom. 6:6, 7; Gal. 6:14; Heb. 2:9). As believers, we all face these enemies, but it is not for us to struggle against them in order to defeat them. Jesus has already done this. Victory comes as we believe in the triumph of the cross. As we believe, the Holy Spirit will cause us to experience Christ’s death within. His death working within will liberate us from the oppression of our spiritual enemies.

While the Lord gave David victory everywhere he went, he was never at peace. The sword never departed from David’s kingdom (2 Sam. 12:10). Only under Solomon was Israel at peace. Solomon, in fact, means “peaceful” (1 Chron. 22:9).

Solomon is the risen Christ in type—King of kings, Son of God, builder of God’s temple (1 Chron. 17:11-14; 22:10; 2 Chron. 9:22, 23). Just as Solomon rested in the victory gained through David’s bloodshed, so the risen Christ rests and reigns by the victory of the cross. God destroyed Satan by the cross, but only through the resurrection did God put Satan under Jesus’s feet (Eph. 1:20-22). The old man was crucified with Christ, but the New Man came forth in the resurrection (Eph. 2:6, 21, 22). Jesus died to sin once for all, but it is only by the resurrection that He lives to God (Rom. 6:7, 10). The world was crucified through the cross of Christ, but the new creation came through His resurrection (Gal. 6:14; 2 Cor. 5:17). The ultimate sign of the rest of Solomon was the building of the temple, a work not possible for David, the man of bloodshed (1 Kings 5:3-5). Likewise, God’s temple in the Spirit could not be built by Christ in His death because the temple we are came forth in His resurrection (John 2:19; Eph. 2:21, 22).

As we know Christ in His death, then, we will meet our enemies face to face and fight them with our faith in the cross (1 Tim. 6:12). But as the Holy Spirit makes Christ’s resurrection real in our experience, we will know the rest of every enemy being under our feet, we will share in the reign of the prince of peace, we will live to God in newness, we will be built together.

The historical administrations of David and Solomon, then, show us two administrations of Christ—His death and resurrection. God’s eternal work was accomplished by both administrations. Consequently, we can see that His work in us will only be accomplished as we are subject to the Holy Spirit’s administration of death and resurrection within. We can expect to experience these two administrations, not once, but throughout our lives. The ascendancy of one or the other is completely under the Holy Spirit’s discretion and control. He will give us victory over particular sins, fleshly thinking, or demonic oppression by bringing us to a new apprehension of Christ’s death. We will then experience rest from, and authority over whatever opposed us as we walk in the newness of Christ’s resurrection. Looking at Bible maps, we can see that the amount of territory under Israel’s control was greatly expanded under the administrations of David and Solomon. This shows us that God’s kingdom control of us will expand as we are ruled by Christ, the Man of bloodshed and of peace.

Lord of the Dead and of the Living

Death and resurrection cannot be separated. This may appear so obvious that saying it seems like a platitude. But what I observe quite often, in the words of others and in my own thoughts, is a dividing of these into two separate categories. Now, it is often necessary and profitable to separate them for the purpose of teaching, to gain the clarity that only comes when a thing is considered in its own right. But it is disastrous to separate these two in actual belief and in the living walk of the believer. Perhaps we have grown too accustomed to thinking of death and resurrection as different subjects. Perhaps it is tidier to deal in false dichotomies than to face the fullness of Christ. We can say with certainty that there are theologies in the church that are based on neglecting or marginalizing either death or resurrection. Protestants avoid crucifixes. Prosperity teachers make great use of 3 John 2 but can’t preach on Philippians 4:12. Christian ascetics love to fast but don’t show up to the wedding feast. In the first few centuries, the church had to vigorously stave off attempts to deny Christ’s divinity or His humanity. I wonder: is diminishing the reality of Christ’s death or Christ’s resurrection any less serious?

In truth, death and resurrection are not subjects at all, but a Person who died and was raised from the dead—Jesus the Lord. We cannot understand them except in Him, and we cannot have fellowship with Him while we minimize one or the other. He is the Life—“which we have looked at and our hands have touched”—that suffered and died on the cross (1 John 1:1). He is the Lamb who reigns yet was slain (Rev. 5:6). The Risen One invites us to touch His wounds (John 20:27). The Seed falls into the ground and dies so that a harvest will come forth (John 12:24). We eat the broken body and poured out blood of Jesus and enter into life through that communion. What a lie we become involved with when we dissect the Christ and subject His death and resurrection to our preferences.

Hebrews 11 is a passage known to many of us as the faith chapter, or, “The Hall of Faith.” Toward the end of this chapter, the author gives a rapid-fire list of things accomplished by faith. As one reads this list, two very distinct groups of saints emerge. Verses 11:33-35 talk of people who conquered, who walked in victory, who lived prosperously, who saw their dead raised to life again. The next three verses are quite different and deal with those who were mocked, tortured, killed, and went about destitute. Yet verse 39 says, “These were all commended for their faith….”

How could living by faith lead to such disparate experiences among God’s people? To make sense of this, we need to remember not just that these saints had faith, but whom their faith was in—the one who would die and rise again. Perhaps they didn’t believe in Jesus explicitly, but they did believe in Him in types and shadows: Abel’s shed blood, Abram receiving Isaac back from the dead, Joseph being raised to the right hand of Pharaoh, the Passover lamb. Clearly, the power of Christ’s resurrection is manifest through the faith of those in verses 11:33-35, while His suffering and death are revealed in the faith of those in verses 11:36-38. If, then, we live by faith in Jesus, we will know Him in the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, and in His death (Php. 3:10).

Unfortunately, we tend to equate faith in Jesus with certain outward circumstances, and we judge others whose situations are different from our own. Some of us think we’re not living by faith unless we are enduring some personal crisis. We might look at a wealthy, successful person and assume there is no way for them to trust the Lord. Conversely, many make the mistake that faith always conquers and never endures. In this mindset, we may think people lack faith if they experience a season of loss, if they don’t get every job promotion they pray for, or if God doesn’t heal them physically. But both of these positions are symptomatic of a Christianity in which death and resurrection are divorced from the person of Christ and are reduced to subjects or historical events.

Ultimately, eternal life is not believing the right things but believing in Him who died and rose again. It is following the Lamb wherever He goes, whether into the tomb or out of it (Rev. 14:4). It is sharing in His anointing and in His anointing for burial (Acts 10:38; Mark 14:3-9). “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You, then, why do you judge your brother?” (Rom. 14:8-10). I pray the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth through the testimony of Jesus (John 15:26, 16:13).

God with Us

During a census driven by greed, in a town to which His parents had no choice about going, after a journey made laborious by labor pains, in an anonymous stable, in a trough nosed by beasts, Jesus was born. When necessities infringe on us, when unfair circumstances direct our paths instead of signs from God, when hardship and strain attend us instead of angels, it is tempting to think God is not with us. Yet, it is precisely in situations such as these that we find Immanuel, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23). We may hear testimonies from those blessed by heavenly signs (such as the wise men), or by the company of angels (such as the shepherds), but these should not be occasions for bitterness or grumbling against the Lord. For, like Mary, we have carried the Son of God within. We have freedom in Him even when we have no choice (2 Tim. 2:9). The presence of New Life gives us rest even when the world won’t give us a room for the night. He is the one to whom all signs lead, of whom all angels sing. We are of the same family as the King of Kings (Heb. 2:11). In tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, or nakedness, God is with us; “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35-39).

True Christianity

True Christianity…where can it be found? This is a question that concerns every believer, for everyone wants to experience Christ in the most authentic way possible. Among Christians, there are many recipes for authentic Christianity, and each person’s choice of church or denomination probably reflects their convictions about what ingredients are essential to faith in Christ. Some hold that true Christianity is the most traditional, while others follow the current move of God. Some say true Christianity is found where the miracles are happening, while others say it is where they are not happening. Some put stock in rituals, some do not. Some say we should meet in church buildings, some in houses. There are proponents of contemporary, pop-style worship, and proponents of choral worship. Prosperity is preached by some, poverty by others. Variations of belief and practice are manifold. These days, true Christianity may come dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, or wearing a suit and tie.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul prayed “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17). True Christianity, according to Paul, is found in the heart, where Christ dwells through faith, not in the outward appearances faith may take. When questioned about differences between Himself and John the Baptist, Jesus replied, “Wisdom is proved right by all her children” (Luke 7:25). In other words, being a child of God is not a matter of religious practice. Likewise, when discussing differences between Samaritan and Jewish worship, Jesus said, “[A] time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks” (John 4:23). Again, true worship of God is not a matter of “how” or “where” but Whom.

In light of these things, perhaps the question needs to be framed in another way all together. Does God want us all to conform to one “true Christianity,” or is He more concerned that our Christianity be true, regardless of what persuasion it is? Whatever convictions each of us have about tradition, miracles, rituals, worship, doctrine, and a thousand other things, it is possible to pursue our convictions with hearts full of faith, and to live our lives before God in spirit and truth.

The recipe, then, for true Christianity is, “And whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). We cannot say the kingdom of God is here or there, in one outward expression of faith or another, “because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20, 21). If we live by faith, Christ will dwell in our hearts, and where He is, true Christianity is.