If you believe that this story is about a son who needs to be saved, you will miss the point of Jesus’ parable. Strange as it may seem, salvation is taken for granted in this wonderful story. The truth of this story is that this father had two sons and each of them could claim an inheritance from their father.
Luke 15:11 begins by simply saying, “A certain man had two sons.” Throughout the Scriptures God’s plan is often unfolded to us by stories of two sons – Adam’s sons Cain and Abel, Abraham’s sons Isaac and Ishmael, Isaac’s sons Esau and Jacob, David’s sons Absalom and Solomon.
BOTH of the sons in the story are SAVED. They are both examples of born-again Christian believers in the family of God. They both are born with an inheritance in their father’s family. The point of the story is that Christians who already have eternal salvation can still take opposite paths in their lives. They can be like the prodigal son or they can be like the faithful son who stayed at home.
The younger son was like many believers today because he did not understand the ways of his father. This is vividly seen in the very first thing this young man said: “Father, give me….” This request concisely defines a believer looking for independence – a genuine child of God who is a give me believer. He chose to possess a part of the father’s riches rather than the loving father himself. The inescapable fact is that believers seeking self-fulfillment through independence don’t really know their Father.
Does this mean we cannot ask God for things? Certainly not. We would all have a difficult time communicating with our heavenly Father if we could not ask Him to fulfill our needs. But it is important that we not base our relationship with the Father on acquiring possessions, or even answered prayer. Many believers think, “Lord, I know you are God that you are over all things, and you are able to accomplish all things,” but deep inside they may think less of Him if they don’t get from Him what they want.
In asking for his portion of the inheritance, the son was saying two things: “My father has it all, but I want only a portion of it;” and “I need only to ask and he will give it to me.” We back God into a corner when we say, “Father, you must give me this because you said you would.” This limits Him to giving us only a portion of what is available to us.
When the son said, “Give me….” The center of his life was himself. During the times when I act as if I am separated from Christ, I want what I think will make me comfortable and happy. This younger son had not yet come to know that he was born with his father’s nature. Similarly most Christians do not comprehend that their very nature came from their heavenly Father at the time they believed. The youngest son had yet to learn (as so many Christians have yet to learn) that he had by birth all the possessions of his father.
In the temporal world, the most harmful thing a father could do is to give his sons their portions. In the spiritual realm, it is sometimes the only way for believers to learn a most difficult lesson. This lesson is that we must see the indwelling Christ as our all, otherwise what we get from God may not be the best He has to give us. I can testify that the Father often used to give me what I wanted. Often however this was not good for me or for Him. But this was for me a part of the process of growing up and learning the lifestyle of the family of God.
Positive thinking and doing may bring you what you want in you attempt at independence, but this so-called success has no relevance to spirituality. We must come to the awareness that receiving things from God is not an accurate barometer of spirituality. He will always take care of you and love you, and in time He will overwhelm your circumstances as you learn of Him. In this case, if the father had said, “You are an ignorant son, and I will not give you the inheritance to squander,” that would not have accomplished the training the son needed. The father in Luke 15 knew that the only way to train his son in the true family lifestyle was to give him what he SHOULD NOT HAVE! The son had to be broken by his circumstances. Then he would come to understand both his father and the family lifestyle.
Although it broke the father’s heart, he gave his son his request. There is a special kind of love that causes the Father to give us His children similar requests. I call it “love that hurts”. The Father does strange things in our lives out of this hurt-love. This kind of love in God is contrary to our human thinking.
This parable shows us three important things about hurt-love. First, God will give something to a believing Christian although He knows it is not best. The Scriptures say that every good and perfect gift comes from God, so we think, “”The Father would not give me something that is not good for me.” And since we are often unwilling to take God’s “No” in answer to our prayers, we press Him using His promises from Scripture. So our loving Father gives us what we ask for or allows us to taste our independence knowing we will be taught by the circumstances and situations that will come through it.
Second, the father of the prodigal son knew the best thing he could do for his son was to let him go. You may think God loves you so much that He doesn’t want you afflicted or in trouble. This is human thinking because God, in His hurt-love, follows a different path. He will let you go your own way, because this will eventually produce in you a greater love for Him.
Third, even though the father has blessed his son with the inheritance he did not send his son away. The son made that choice himself and the father’s hurt-love allowed it.
The words “give me” reveal another component of an independent leaning Christian – when the son said this, he did not consider that his father’s wealth could bless not just him but the whole world. He did not want access to his inheritance so he could help people in need. It was to be his money to do with as he pleased. He could have helped just one widow and kept the rest for himself, but even that small gesture was absent.
The center of problems with the Christian child of God is independence. Our country had one Declaration of Independence. But we Christians seem to thrive on new Declarations of Independence almost daily.
The most important possession you can have on this earth is the knowledge of who you are in union with Christ. When you ask for a portion of material goods, it is only yours as long as you can hold onto it. But your position in Christ is eternal. Like many Christians, the younger son of this rich father made a colossal mistake. If he had stayed in his father’s house in a dependent attitude, he would have enjoyed all that his father owned, not just a portion. Christians are blessed “with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3).
You may ask, Do you mean by just living the life of Christ, events and situations will straighten out? Absolutely. Human independence however will not accept that just by being in Christ things will straighten out. But according to the New Testament, if you do what comes naturally according to Christ’s nature in you, everything will fall into place. Even if things don’t seem to change, it won’t matter because you will be at rest in Him.
The son may have finally felt as if he had control of his own life when he took his inheritance and went into a far country. The term far country indicates three things: First, the son wanted independence from his father. Second, he wanted to make a name for himself. And third, he did not want his success attributed to his father. The far country signifies independence from God and is familiar territory to every believer.
If you feel that you don’t have your independent life or work under control, cheer up; you are on the right road. God never intended that you figure it all out. He intended that you trust Jesus Christ, that you grow in dependence upon Him. God’s plan was not that you just seek Jesus in an emergency. If there are loose ends in your life, then thank the Father. The loose ends are there to bring you to the end of yourself when you can thank the Father that you are joined in union with Christ and that He is your only life.
The only lasting happiness is when a believer knows who he is to his Father. Everything else is fleeting; it will pass. The son in this parable came to that knowledge and the father recognized it. So there was great joy and rejoicing in the father’s house “…And they began to be merry” (Luke 15:24).
My prayer for everyone who reads this parable is that the Holy Spirit will reveal the Son who lives within you as your only life. The younger son did not need salvation – he already had it and didn’t know it. He needed recognition of who he was: the son of a rich man with abundant riches and grace.
The sooner you seek and trust Jesus in you, not the things you can do for Him or even the worldly things He can do for you, the sooner you will enter into the rest which God has for you.
Consider the importance of faith. Consider its place in human behavior. Is there one single act that one single man has ever taken, from the trivial to the sublime, which has not faith as its method of performance?
A man desires to eat. How then does he eat, and what? He sees some food which appears both pleasant and nutritious, he believes in its value. He takes, chews, swallows, digests, every action of which is pure faith and nothing but faith. At any moment in any of these actions, if his faith in the food is shaken, if he were caused to change his faith into its reverse – believing that it was bad for him – he would immediately and automatically cease to take, chew, swallow, or even digest (if he could!).
Faith IS human action. Faith is the God-implanted, natural and only way by which a man can go through all the processes of doing or obtaining the things he desires.
Sufficient, I hope, has now been said to bring home this first point of fundamental importance: THAT, NEXT TO THE CAPACITY TO RECEIVE GOD’S LOVE, FIATH IS THE MOST IIMPORTANT FACULTY THAT MAN POSSESSES.
Spiritual Faith
Faith may come naturally, but it proceeds on spiritually. What is the difference between natural and spiritual faith? There is really no difference. But you say, “What about Ephesians 2:8 – “by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God?” The answer is that all have the capacity to believe; but actual faith is that capacity stimulated to action by a faith-producing object. In this sense spiritual faith – the act of believing in Christ – is a gift on God. For it could not exist without Christ as its all-satisfying object. Bit it remains equally true that the capacity to believe is inherent in all, otherwise God could not command us to believe, as He does.
So the difference between natural and spiritual faith is merely in the object of faith. But this difference is so radical that it might appear as if there were two altogether different types of faith.
So in the normal acts of life the process of living faith is so natural, so unnoticed, so continual, that no one dreams of calling it faith – but it is. Now, however, we have a gulf to cross, a chasm which man cannot bridge, from the natural to the spiritual. How can faith leap that gulf? And is the same quality of faith effectual on both sides?
God, not man, has bridged that gulf, and bridged it for the one purpose of reclaiming, redeeming to Himself, back from the devil, back from the flesh, back from the world, man with his two dynamic faculties, productive of so much sin or so much good, those faculties of love and faith.
And so God comes down to meet man’s naturally faith with His Son, His Word, His Spirit. The gulf is bridged. Natural faith can now operate in the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven as simply and naturally as in the things of earth. Faith now has a spiritual object.
Let’s not get things out of proportion – the relative importance of giver and recipient in this matter of faith. In one ceaseless river God pours His gifts upon us, all things natural and supernatural, whether it be sun and rain, food and the riches of the earth, or His grace in Jesus Christ. All things but one! He does not force acceptance on us. He presses all upon us, His earthly gifts, His Son, Himself. But we must take. 99% of life consists of God’s endless giving. 1% consists of taking. Both are essential, but in that proportion.
Faith supplies the 1%. That is all. God supplies the 99% (properly speaking, the 100% is His, for faith itself is a God-given natural faculty.) Our consideration is only centered around the 1%, yet experience shows that so many Christians are lukewarm and dull, not because they don’t know the grace of God revealed in Christ, but because they don’t know how, steadily, consistently, to appropriate, use, and apply what they are given, according to the set natural laws of appropriation – of faith.
Every man by nature has built around him some working philosophy of life. He is as good as other people, probably better than some. He doesn’t do his neighbor any harm. He believes in a Creator who has place him in a world that he, the man, must sustain. Or else he has a frankly materialistic and hedonistic, or agnostic, or even atheistic point of view. Anyway, he has some basis to life, however flimsy, however unsatisfactory, or however self-satisfying. AND TO THAT BASIS HIS FAITH IS ATTACHED. He is a believer all right – in his particular outlook: it may be a false faith, a perverted faith, but it is HIS faith.
Now conviction of his sin knocks that flimsy prop from under him. It no longer satisfies, it is no longer reliable. Now his faith is tossed here and there without an anchoring object.
The Spirit points him to Jesus. Here is faith’s sure resting place. The decision is made, Christ for me. Faith dares to take Him at His word: “The Lord is my shepherd.” Not a new faculty of faith, kind you, but a new content and object for faith. That’s all. The very same faith which was once centered in the man’s self-sufficiency in the world is now changed to rest in Christ – a natural faculty purified, redirected, possessed and controlled by the Spirit.
And note again that the 1% of human faith had to go out to meet the 99% of God’s grace. That is all God asks of our free will. He wants us to make the choice of faith in Christ. That 1% faith is important to Him so that all His human creatures are not automatons.
Human life in the world is a schoolhouse to bring our natural faculty of faith into the spiritual. Everything involves the powers of persuasion. We at first are persuaded by the world, the flesh and the devil. But as powerful as these may be at times, these are imperfect persuaders. The human race has an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving Creator God who also is a persuader – a Perfect Persuader!
And each human creature, although the final choice is ultimately his, makes his choice by persuasion. And only the Creator God knows exactly what is necessary in the “schoolhouse”, what lessons of life, what deep and trying circumstances, how far the person must sink to be persuaded within his natural faculty of faith. God wants a deliberate choice by the person to accept His love and forgiveness, BUT ONLY THAT 1% “MEASURE OF FAITH” IS INVOLVED. God does the rest of the 99% which makes it, for all intents and purposes, THE UNMERITED GIFT OF THE GRACE OF GOD.
The faith could not save, only God’s abounding grace could do that. But the faith was the decisive action of a free person, seeing, believing, being freely persuaded, receiving and opening his being to the control of Jesus Christ.
Lee S. WishingEP News Service Lee Wishing is administrative director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College.
Riding an exercise bike at my employer's physical fitness center, I saw live images on the large television screen shot from Paradise, Pennsylvania. At first there were no people in the scenes, just buildings and a message at the bottom of the screen about school shootings. Someone asked, "Where's Paradise, Pennsylvania.?" I said, "It sounds like an Amish community. It's probably in the Harrisburg area or east." The guy next to me said, "If Paradise is an Amish community, I guess we can't blame these shootings on television."Perhaps that's true.
Knowledge of the shooter is just now coming out. News reports suggest that the killer was seeking revenge for something that happened 20 years ago. If that's true, the shooter was only 12 at that time. He was in elementary school.
Just last week I spoke to a group of elementary school students in their chapel service. As part of my talk, I asked the group of fifth through eighth graders to tell me the insults they often hear in school and on the playground. They started slowly. One hand goes up, "dweeb!" A few more hands go up: fat! stupid! ugly! dumb! wimp! brace-face! moron! sissy! The pace quickens. Hands shoot up like popcorn as the room transforms into a Don Rickles convention powered by Mountain Dew. After a few minutes of this, and 50 or more insults, I gave the kids the hook. Their rapid-fire response to my query worked perfectly for the chapel talk. Too perfectly, I guess. I was there to relay a message about murder. My theme was the opposite of the old incantation, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Words do hurt. In fact, one great man in history equates hurling insults with murder. When I told the barb-throwing students that they were actually committing murder by calling their friends these names the room got quiet. How could an insult be equated with murder, they wondered.
During the verbal melee, the eighth grade teacher noted that for some people being insulted is like death. The insult is permanent. The pain may never go away, she said. When I wrote my chapel talk I hadn't thought of that. I knew the teacher was right and proceeded to build on her insightful comment for the benefit of the students.
At the time of this writing, we don't know why the Paradise killer wanted to get revenge for something that happened 20 years ago; when he was in elementary school. But we do know this -- insults are like murder, like death. They may have a permanent effect on the recipient. Who was the great man of history who equated insults with murder, with the seventh commandment? It was Jesus in his "Sermon on the Mount." When you have some time, check out what He has to say in Matthew 5:21 22.
Regardless of who you think Jesus is or was, his words ring true today. I had read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters five through seven) many times, but had never really paid much thought to the part about insults and murder. But when my pastor preached about the subject this past summer I paid attention because I am interested in public persuasion and have been concerned about the tone of our nation's political dialogue. Insults equal murder? Come on, really? At least in the mind of Jesus, it's true. And it's true in the mind of the eighth grade teacher. Sometimes, insults are like death. They're permanent. They hurt the recipient and may never go away.Tell your kids to be careful with their words at school. Tell them to live out the Golden Rule, also found in the Sermon on the Mount, and to love their neighbors as themselves. Milton is right, Paradise is lost. We live in a world where words kill.
The flight of airplanes has been brought back vividly to our minds by scenes on TV of planes crashing into buildings in New York. The most recent is the crash into the 40th floor of an apartment building by a Yankee baseball pitcher. And on the fifth anniversary of "9-11" last month, we were shown again the heart-wrenching pictures of the hijacked airliners smashing into the Twin Towers. After so many years of airplane flight, we tend to take airplanes for granted. In one respect it is good that we do because we shouldn't be ducking every time we see an airplace close. But on the other hand, it is good to look at the correlation between airplane flight and our Christian life and how we as spiritual beings are meant to operate in the material world. It would be good to review a previous article which I wrote a few years ago. Click here.
safe - 1 freed from harm or risk 2 secure from threat of danger or loss 3 implies freedom from anxiety or apprehension of danger Webster‘s Dictionary
Safety is a big issue in the modern world. With the instant communication systems developed today, we are able to see and hear about bad things that have happened to others and can happen to us. We all look for safety for ourselves and those around us. Oh sure, there are some of us who seem to be dare-devils. Some seem to want to live on the edge and risk all. But do they really?
I believe that, deep down, even the supreme dare-devil has his safety net. There are some things that even he considers stupidly dangerous and dangerously stupid. Anyone in his right mind has a limit on and respects safety. We abandon our own particular safe limit for only two reasons: we become mentally unbalanced or we care for others enough to heroically give up our own safety.
I believe that our built-in safety mechanisms are perfected by God in three distinct stages of growth and maturity.
Stage One: Learning That GOD Is Safe
As people come to a recognition of a supreme being called “God”, they seldom, at first, see Him as “safe” to them. Our religious cultures have often taught us to keep God at arm’s length because it is not safe to get Him riled up by our actions. We see Him as judgmental and harsh toward our bad deeds and capable of causing danger for our future. Fire and brimstone church sermons about sin and its “hell” consequences paint a picture of a God who is far from safe to get near.
But as it is revealed to us that God IS love - not that love is something God can portion out to us as He sees fit, the picture begins to change. We grow to see that only total love could account for the death of the Son of God. John 3:16 becomes the cornerstone of God’s desires for mankind. We learn that the all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present and EVER-LOVING God is ALL, WHOLE and WITHOUT LACK - so, therefore, He is TRUSTABLE. He is not out to “get us”. GOD IS SAFE!
Stage Two: the Universe - His CREATION - Is Safe
The logical extension of God’s safety is that what He has made is safe. As an expression of God, no person, no place and no circumstance could come to us that was not actually Him in disguise.
But how can this be? Many things that we confront every day seem to represent danger to us. But do they really? For people separated from God, they certainly do. But as we are reborn as children in the Family of God, the material world develops an eternal “safety-net”. We then grow to relate everything material to how it affects our eternal, spiritual life as a child of God.
Crime, natural disasters, sickness, etc., do not present any real danger to the child in the Family of a totally loving God. God promises protection for His children. The form which that protection takes varies. The danger may avoid us completely. Or it may affect us but be turned to God’s good purposes and even correct us toward a closer trust in God’s guidance. Or it may affect us in such a way that the way we handle the situation becomes God’s light to others. Or we may only be rescued from the danger by death and going to be with God after death. Yes, for a Christian, THE UNIVERSE IS SAFE!
Stage Three: I, PERSONALLY Am Safe
Here God provides the finishing touches on your safety system. We have come to believe that God is safe IF we are obedient - the universe is safe IF we are obedient. And we continue into stage three with the concept that I am safe IF I am obedient. But the problem is that I am NOT always obedient! I do not always follow God’s rules and guidance as a Christian, therefore, I must not always be safe!
But the culmination of our spiritual growth as a Christian is the awareness and understanding that, as a rebirthed child in God’s Family having the divine nature of the Father and the indwelling Son and Holy Spirit, I AM ALWAYS SAFE, EVEN WHEN I SLIP UP AND AM NOT OBEDIENT!
The apostle Paul probably had the best understanding of any Bible writer about how the Christian life really worked out in practice. But he did not get an instant revelation of salvation when he was struck down at his conversion or even during his solitude in the deserts of Arabia. Even Paul had a period of frustration trying to make the Christian life work. He did not feel safe - he did not have the “peace that surpasses all understanding”. He had to grow into peace and safety.
Paul’s chapter Seven of Romans is what I call the “Frustrated Christian Chapter”. Many have looked here at Paul’s wailings about his inability to be obedient to God and they have come to the conclusion that Paul here must have been recalling the time before he became a Christian. This giant of a spiritual person, Paul, certainly couldn’t have been this frustrated AFTER his new birth in Christ!
BUT HE WAS! Even knowing who he was in union with Christ, Paul became exasperated with obedience. He felt UNSAFE, insecure, and not at peace with himself, the world, or God.
Paul’s learning process as a child of God had to continue and progress into Romans Eight - what I call the “Safe and Secure Salvation Chapter”. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romaris 8:1-2)
The key to living the Christian life is, as Paul came to see, knowing that you are SAFE and at peace with God during every second of your life from conversion and new birth onward. Your life as a child of God will never be taken away from you. You do not have to fear eternal punishment and separation from God. This factor of SAFETY is the only way that we can see the fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23 - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. These can all be summed up in the “peace that surpasses all understanding”. And a peaceful heart can only come when we understand SAFETY.
It took a period in Paul‘s life before he understood that he was SAFE. And every Christian must go through a similar period of variable length before he knows that he is SAFE.
In my own life, it took as long as the Israelites in the wilderness - forty years - for me to come to the understanding that I am SAFE in the Family of God. I probably became an “official” “born again” Christian somewhere around ten or twelve when I was really able to choose to follow Jesus and make Him the Lord of my life. But it was not until my early fifties that I understood being SAFE.
I spent forty years in the frustration of Romans Seven. That is a long time, longer than God ever intends for His child to learn SAFETY. But each one of us is different, and God is patient with His children.
The problem for me and probably for most others also is that I couldn’t be SAFE and at peace as long as the fear of eternal punishment hung over my head. And the idea of having sorrow and repentance for my sins after they occurred didn’t help very much. I was always fearful of dying before repentance for my last sin. I was like Paul. I wanted to do good and please God - but I so often failed, felt guilty, but couldn’t seem to change. Many things I knew I should do, I didn’t do. And things that I knew I should not do, I found myself helpless to prevent. The spiritual giant, Paul, said, “0 wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?”
This fear of death after sin and the eternal punishment to follow lingered in my Christian life for forty years. Oh, certainly there was much to be happy about and feel good about during those forty years. Even more so than the Israelites in the wilderness, God gave me a physical existence and supplied my needs at a level greater than the majority of people on this earth. And I never neglected being thankful for this. I felt God’s love, I had a desire to please Him. But in the back of my mind I, like Paul, feared eternal punishment and was not peaceful and SAFE.
And then it happened! Almost like a bolt out of the blue I, like Paul, came out of the wilderness of danger into the awareness and understanding that THERE IS THEREFORE NOW NO CONDEMNATION, NO ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, FOR A CHILD IN THE FAMILY OF GOD. I, therefore, am truly SAFE!
Only with this understanding can the fruits of the Spirit be released in our lives. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, as Proverbs says. But SAFETY in the Lord is the culmination of knowledge!
How does this SAFETY in union with Christ work? Didn’t God say that all sin deserves death and eternal punishment? Isn’t all sin deadly?
The answer lies in the difference between punishment and correction. PUNISHMENT is a penalty imposed on an offender for a crime or wrongdoing. It has retribution in view - paying someone back what he deserves for his actions. Punishment is looking backward to the offense, is impersonal and automatic, and its goal is the administration of justice. CORRECTION or discipline, on the other hand, is totally different. Correction is training that develops self-control, character and ability. It is looking forward to a beneficial result, is very personal, and individually applied.
Before our conversion and new birth, punishment for our sins is wholly applicable. But the Bible stresses over and over that Jesus came to receive the punishment of death for us - to pay for our sins so that justice could prevail.
And so, after God births us into His Family in union with Christ and the Holy Spirit, punishment for sin no longer applies to the Christian child of God. Sin has a different result in the life of a Christian. Under the New Covenant, God never deals with His children on the basis of punishment. All of the punishment of God built into sin was fully received by our Savior Jesus Christ on the cross. Now that we are His children, God deals with us only on the basis of correction.
So if Jesus took our punishment for us, the Father is not going to bring up the sins of people who have lived in union with Christ at a later “Judgment”.
But, like any good father, God does apply correction to His children when they slip-up and sin. His child must be made to recognize the mistake and understand that sin is not the “natural” thing to do anymore. Since we are reborn at conversion and, as Peter said, “partake of the divine nature”, God disciplines us as needed to show that sin is no longer “natural” for His child. God does not disown us. Christ and the Holy Spirit remain within us. They will never leave us.
Sin “bends” our relationship with our heavenly Father, but it cannot break it. The Father will see to that. There can never be eternal punishment for a child of God.
But correction hurts! In fact, punishment and correction sometimes “feel” the same to the one on the receiving end! Our sins as Christians can sometimes even have life-long human hurts and consequences. But these are correctional consequences which God turns to good in the development of His child. The sharp difference can be seen in both the attitude and the goal of the One doing it.
So when a Christian grows to the awareness of stage three, he will no longer have a fear of dying at a bad time - before telling God that he is sorry for a particular sin. He will have an awareness of SAFETY. And this awareness will increase the bond between Father and child. The fact is that the Father loves him so much that nothing the child can do will break the Family bond with an all-caring Father.
Does this “white-wash” Christian sin? Not at all. It is still serious and has painful effects, but not terminal!
A Christian can go to bed at night feeling safe whether or not he is sure about his own repentance.
A Christian can go out on the highway in traffic feeling safe whether or not he is sure about his sorrow for his last sin.
A Christian can withstand the onslaught of natural disasters, hurricanes and floods, feeling safe whether or not he is sure that he is pleasing to the Father.
As we move from Romans 7 to Romans 8, WE ARE SAFE in union with Christ. We join in the excitement of Paul: “There is therefore now NO CONDEMNATION!”
Wednesday, August 1, 2001 Alabama Chief Justice Judge Roy Moore unveiled a 5,300 pound, washing machine-sized granite cube in the Alabama Judicial rotunda. Engraved on top were the Ten Commandments from the book of Exodus in the King James Version Bible. The sides of the monument bore quotations from the Declaration of Independence and several other founding fathers as well as the national motto: “In God We Trust”, the 1954 Pledge of Allegiance and the Preamble to the Alabama Constitution. At its unveiling, Moore announced that the monument depicts the “moral foundations of law” and reflects the “sovereignty of God over the affairs of men.”
Friday, November 14, 2003 After a long, highly publicized battle, the monument was removed by order of U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson. Judge Moore was suspended by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission for refusing the obey Judge Thompson’s court order. On the other hand, he was elevated to hero status by some religions conservatives.
One famous Christian leader, addressing Judge Moore’s suspension, lamented, “The old earthen dam that has held and protected the reservoir of Judeo-Christian values and beliefs since the days of our Founding fathers has been leaking for decades. But in recent weeks, the entire superstructure appears to have given way. We must return to our nation’s Christian heritage.”
Looking back now, I have to say that while I admire Judge Moores’ determination and conviction, I can’t support his cause. In fact, I’ve always had difficulty understanding why we Christians so fanatically promote the Ten Commandments. Yes, they represent our historic spiritual heritage as a people, but I can’t agree with Judge Moore when he says the Ten Commandments are the moral foundation of our law, upon which all other law is based. Such comments represent an oversight of Jesus’ life and teaching, not to mention the core message of the New Testament. Furthermore, which Christian heritage do we want America to return to? Old Testament slavery? The Old Testament example of violent conquest of peoples? Old Testament racism? Old Testament oppression of women?
I just can’t figure out why Christians, of all people, would want to build monuments to the Old Testament Law. What do non-Christians think as they watch us feverishly defending our sacred Ten Commandments monuments? They think Christianity is just another religion of rules and regulations - that God’s attitude toward us is based upon how well we keep all those laws. Of course, that means they’re doomed because nobody can keep all those laws.
So why even bother with Christianity? Jesus ran into this same granite wall. Let me illuminate His response by first asking a question. What is the greatest commandment in the New Testament?
I’m sure your mind just traveled in Matthew 22:36-40 which reads: “’Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
But this passage does not answer my question. I asked what is the greatest commandment in the NEW Testament. But the above passage is Jesus’ brilliant answer regarding what is the greatest commandment in the OLD Testament, not the NEW Testament. Look again. Jesus said, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” That’s in the OLD Testament.
If we simply must erect a monument to the Old Covenant of Moses, why not take Jesus’ advice and simply inscribe these two commandments in granite instead of all ten from the Book of Exodus?
However, an even more fundamental question has to be asked. Why would we want to erect of monument of any kind to the Old Covenant which the author of Hebrews said Jesus made obsolete? “By coming up with a new plan, a new covenant between God and Hs people, God put the old plan on the shelf. And there it stays, gathering dust” (Hebrews 8:13, The Message). Paul was even more direct when he said that Jesus “abolished” the law with its commands and laws (Ephesians 2:14-15).
Yes, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). But by fulfilling the Law, Jesus made it obsolete. “By calling this covenant ‘new’, He (Jesus) has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” Hebrews 8:13 NIV).
I believe that the last thing Jesus would want us to do is erect granite monuments to the very Law that He set us free from by His suffering and death on the cross. When Jesus shouted, It is finished!” from the cross, among other things, He meant the Law is finished, and we are now free!
Do I think the Law and the Ten Commandments are part of Scripture? Absolutely. Are they still useful? Certainly. Do I think we need a Ten Commandments monument in every American courthouse? Absolutely not.
Again as Paul said, “The Law code had a perfectly legitimate function. Without its clear guidelines for right and wrong, moral behavior would be mostly guesswork.” (Romans 7:7, The Message). But the Ten Commandments only help us identify evil; they never have, and never will deliver us from evil. God never intended for them to be the basis of moral law – that is reserved for faith, hope and love … especially love.
Conservative Christianity’s insistence that the Ten Commandments be the basis of our moral law is an exercise in futility. Some say rulings such as the removal of the Ten Commandments from our schools, court houses and other public places has helped lead to the social decline we see all around us. Why then are the rates of negative social indicators (divorce, teen pregnancy, substance abuse bankruptcy, domestic violence, etc.) as high, and sometimes higher, inside the church where the Ten Commandments are still hanging, as they are outside of it where they aren’t?
Yet, I’m even more concerned about how clinging to the old legalism has entrapped us in a system that values rules over relationships. Obsession with rules encourages self-righteousness and harsh judgment upon those who break the rules. It reduces life to exclusive good/bad and with/against categories – all based on whether you have or have not broken a rule.
We often say “Christianity is a relationship, not a religion.” Why then do we keep slipping back into legalistic religion? Christianity is not what we do for God; it’s what God has done for us. It’s not about being religious; it’s about loving and being loved. Our hope is in the person of Jesus, not some religious system of rules that plagiarizes His name.
This is why Paul said, “Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. I am emphatic about this .The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered…” and “…we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life” (Galatians 5:1-2 and Romans 8:12-14, The Message).
If we must build a monument, why not build one to the greatest commandment Jesus gave in the New Testament? “Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I love you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples, when they see the love you have for each other” (John 13:34-35, The Message).
However, such a “Love One Another” monument would be completely redundant, because God has already built many of them: “This new plan I’m making with Israel isn’t going to be written on paper, isn’t going to be chiseled in stone; this time I’m writing out the plan IN THEM, carving it on the lining of their hearts. I’ll be their God, they’ll be My people” (Hebrews 8:10, The Message). EVERY CHRISTIAN IS TO BE A LIVING MONUMENT OF THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
How many sermons have you heard based upon Old Testament people of God like Abraham, Moses, Elijah, David, etc.? We certainly can learn things from the stories of the Old Testament, but we must be careful to remember one thing: NO ONE BEFORE THE CROSS OF CHRIST HAD GOD INDWELLING THEM AS WE DO!
In many cases, I’m afraid we have acted as if there is no difference between the saints before the Cross and the saints after the Cross. Certainly we had people of God - saints of God - before the Cross. God dealt with the Hebrew people and faith in God did exist. But all that faith brought about was to cause God to deal with them physically – supplying their physical needs, even causing miracles to aid them physically. But any connection to an external God spiritually only brought about physical blessings – they still remained spiritually dead to God internally.
What does Hebrews 11 say about the Old Testament saints? The whole chapter extols all the physical virtues of a long list of Old Testament people, but then says that “all died in faith not having received the promises…” (v. 13) and that “all having obtained a good report through faith, did not receive the promise – God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect” (v. 39-40).
What was the “better thing for us”? It is an INDWELLING GOD rather than an external God. The indwelling God could not happen until after the Cross. The Church, the Body of Christ, is something special and unique to the Father because it represents His Son – head and body – in its fullness. “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9); “…and gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church which is His body, the fullness of Him…” (Eph. 1:22-23).
Think how Galatians 2:20 would read prior to the Cross – something like this: I am not crucified with Christ, I still live, and the life I live in the flesh I live by my own faith…” Of course, this is the “old man”, spiritually dead to God, speaking.
I am led to do the same thing with other Scriptures that belong to the Church, Scriptures that Old Testament saints couldn’t claim for themselves. Romans 8:9 belongs only to the Church and how would it read before the Cross? Something like this: But you are not in the Spirit but in the flesh because the spirit of God doesn’t dwell in you.
Let’s take Romans 6:11 and read it prior to the Cross: I am alive to sin but dead to God.
If we put these Scriptures together with other ones, we must conclude that prior to the Cross, God dealt with people according to the flesh since they were dead to God spiritually. Why is this important to know?
Before the Cross, some had little faith; others had great faith; and still others were faithless. Before the Cross, there was no way any humans could be one with God because God is spirit and humans were living in the flesh. Only in Christ, in His Spirit, will you find oneness and completeness.
We all need role-model examples to carry us forward in our Christian walk. I believe that we should look to the New Testament saints after the Cross in the book of Acts and the epistles to find most of our role-models and only occasionally use the spiritually dead to God saints of the Old Testament. I know I can learn good things from Moses and others; but I can learn good things from unbelievers too, since both are spiritually dead to God. But on both occasions, the flesh is the focus. The old man in Moses and everyone before the Cross is very much alive today. There is much teaching going around today that uses Old Testament saints as examples, but from them we can only learn a few good things they did in the flesh with God’s external help! We hear this and we go home wanting to be like Moses, like Joshua, like this prophet or that saint.
What about Jesus? After I was born again, I am greater than Moses, greater than Joshua, greater than anyone in the Old Testament BECAUSE I NOW HAVE THE INDWELLING GOD IN JESUS CHRIST. Prior to this rebirth, I was already in Moses’ image (Adam) – fleshly and dead to God spiritually. The Cross did away with the old so the new could enter. A new creation was raised out of Christ’s death on the Cross so that now, in union with Christ, we may all be one.
In Christ, there are no levels of faith; there is but one faith, and it’s the faith of Christ (as the original Greek rendering in Galatians 2:20). I once had a measure of dead physical faith as Abraham had, as Moses had, and which the Holy Spirit quickened enough to believe and accept Christ, but from there I entered into the faith of Christ, this we have moved from faith to faith as recorded in Romans 1:17.
Jesus and His Cross really do make a great difference; and it’s about time we honor the work God accomplished to Christ. We must stop trying to correct the flesh to make it something. It will never be Jesus! If do’s and don’ts could have corrected the flesh, Moses’ Law would have done the job; it didn’t! God help us see this! We, the Church, must take the Scriptures that belong only to the Church and ask the Holy Spirit to brighten those Scriptures to us. We, as Paul, must put everything aside, count it as dung, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Phil. 3:10).
We waste so much time and money on how to get the earthly, the temporal, and the fleshly that we don’t grow spiritually as we should. We say we preach Jesus, but a lot of it is “my faith”, “my tithe”, “my faithfulness”, “my commitment”, “my this”, my that” – all against what the Word says: “For we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5).
