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We are a woman being courted by two men, Christ and the world. John urges us to go with the right man, though the wrong man is more flagrant with his promises.

15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
17 The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

This is an abrupt shift in context. We are talking about little children, young men, and fathers, and how their good merits are motivating him to write, and he launches into this. I think it is clear he wants to emphasize that he is writing these warnings to them BECAUSE they are believers and true Christians, not because he doubts the authenticity of their faith. Many might, and actually do, take these warnings and admonitions in a way that brings doubt concerning the authenticity of their faith. He has categorically stated that he is writing to his intended audience of readers as those who really are believers, and that these warnings and admonitions and encouragements are for them.

This means that it is possible to be a real believer, one of the ones John is writing to, and to still be in danger of loving the world. You can be saved and love the world. It is inadvisable but when he says “the love of the Father is not in him,” it is not a damning or final absence, but a present existential but temporary absence. Just as he acknowledges that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from ALL sin (1 John 1:7), yet asks us two sentences later to confess our sins so He will cleanse us (1 John 1:9), so here he confirms that he is talking to real believers whose sins are forgiven and who know God, yet need the warning not to love the world. This is practical advice, not soteriological doctrine. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, but we may need help interpreting this meaningfully into our current situation. We may be real overcoming forgiven knowers of God, but we may need advice to keep us from getting starry-eyed over the world’s shiny poison apples.

So what is the advice? Can we actually read the verse now without worrying about the soteriological dangers of it? It hinges around love. Don’t “love” the world. The “love” of the Father.

The world is calling out for our affections. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life. It makes its promises, it appeals to us. John says, don’t believe the promises, because if you set your desires and hopes on anything that is in the world, you will be disappointed. The pleasures of the world are not eternal, because the world is passing away. It isn’t that the world WILL pass away, but at this present time, the world IS PASSING AWAY. Just as momentary light affliction IS PRODUCING for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:17), so momentary light affections are pinned on pleasures which are passing away. If you pin your precious affections on the fleeting vaporous pleasures of the world, you will be disappointed because they won’t last.

Note that there is not a corresponding admonition to love the Father instead. He doesn’t say, don’t love the world, instead love the Father. He says, if you love the world, the love OF THE FATHER is not in you. There are two universes calling for your affections, initiating romance towards you. Constantly through entertainment, advertising, media, provocative fashion, colleagues, and general worldly people, the serpent calls out to us and reasons with us about the desirability of the forbidden. There is the promise of applause, accolades, admiration if we will embrace the world’s pleasures and promises with our desire. You may be torn about who to respond to, but John says, don’t respond to the world. Nevertheless, our place is to respond. In this is love, not that we love God, but that God loved us (1 John 4:10). We love, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Within 3 minutes of writing or dictating this paragraph, John is going to write those things.

We are a woman being courted by two men, Christ and the world. John urges us to go with the right man, though the wrong man is more flagrant with his promises.

John is clear, that if you love the world, if you set your desire on the forbidden, the present manifest experience of the love of the Father is not in you. You can’t date both men. The love of the Father leads us on to better passions, honorable passions, lasting successes. The pleasures of the Father are eternal (Psalm 16:11). Perhaps in order to persuade us to eschew these pleasures, the love of the Father withdraws from us when we turn our affections towards the flesh, because these things are harmful to us and He doesn’t want to be a part of causing us emotional and spiritual injury.

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38 “You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.
39 “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 40 and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.
John 5:38-39

If you think you can exegete (carefully study the scriptures in a scholarly way and explain them) while violating the principle of grace and justification, you need to think again. The loudest word God has spoken is Christ (John 1:1-14), and the most dramatic and clear part of that word is His death on the cross. If you violate the purpose of that message, if you cut out that particular piece of context, if you forget or obscure the cross, you do violence to the text no matter how many Greek words you quote.

I will continue to resist this style of “exegesis” and I will persist in saying so. Downplaying or watering down the centrality of the cross to press obligation and responsibility back on people in the name of exegesis or sanctification is demonic and evil.

Thank you, I’ll be here all week! In fact, I’ll be here all eternity, saying so. If I’m off, I’m justified by His blood, so I’m kind of in the opposite of a catch-22. Can our condemning demon exegetes say the same thing? They don’t even seem to want to!

This is after reflection on the comments on this post on Tullian Tchivijian’s blog:

Law Begets Resistance

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12 I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake.
13 I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one I have written to you, children, because you know the Father.
14 I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
1 John 2:12-14

We have three figures from three generations: little children, fathers, and young men. He repeats admonitions to them twice, according to this chart:

Here are some observations about this passage.

• Notice the prevalence of knowing Him who has been from the beginning. It’s the only virtue the fathers seem to hang on. The children have forgiveness which is associated closely with this knowledge.
• The young men do not hang on knowing, but on action, and John seems to be OK with that. They have overcome, they are strong.
• The fathers don’t seem to hang so much on forgiveness as on knowledge of Him.
• Knowing Him is qualified by the idea of knowing Him as the One from the beginning, the inception of all things, as the eternal God. This must refer to Christ, because God as understood by Jews held this as a given.
• It is particularly addressed to males for the older figures, young men and fathers. The children are undifferentiated.
• At first he says he IS writing them, secondly he says he HAS written to them. Was there another letter? It is unclear.
• He is writing or has written to them. Words, and receiving words, is an important part of ministry.
• He recognizes strengths in these figures, and these strengths are the genesis or cause of his writing. We can give messages, not only as correction but as encouragement. We must read all of 1 John under this rubric of writing because of true knowledge and service toward God, because he says clearly here that this is why he is writing to them.
• The young men are repeated to have overcome the evil one. We might surmise that the battle with the evil one lies particularly strong with the young men. Thus they are said to be strong.
• Note also, concerning young men, that the word abides in them, and there must be a connection between their strength and the dwelling of the word in them.
• The young men are not said to be in the process of overcoming the evil one. They are said to have already overcome the evil one.
• There is an evil one. He might be said to be particularly focused on young men.
• The fathers know Him who has been from the beginning, at the time of this writing, and at the time of the prior writing. The children knew Him in the past, but presently needed to be reminded that their sins are forgiven.
• How interesting, that the children’s sins are forgiven, not (only?) for their own sakes, but for HIS NAME’s sake. It occurs to me that we ought not contest His forgiveness, because His name suffers if we consider ourselves to be unforgiven.
• It doesn’t say that young men don’t know Him who has been from the beginning, nor does it say that the fathers have not overcome the evil one. By asserting the truth of one category of male, it doesn’t deny that truth concerning the other categories.
• It would seem that a great deal hinges on KNOWING Him. It is the Greek word “Ginosko”, which means variously “be aware of”, feel, perceive, be resolved, can speak (as in, God can speak to them, they hear), to be sure, to understand.
• A great deal for the young men seems to hinge on the idea of “overcoming”. It is the Greek “Nikao”, (from the Gr “nike”) – to conquer, to overcome, to prevail, to get the victory, to triumph.
• Perhaps there is that in young men which needs to conquer, and grace to them is giving them a challenge and allowing them the chance to prove their strength and win. This is not something which John seeks to take away from them by telling them to be still and know. He praises their overcoming.

These are raw observations sprinkled with some speculation on this text. I pray it spurs your own thinking on this important passage in 1 John.

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There is a lot of teaching and conversation going on these days concerning the sermon on the mount. Tullian Tchividjian is currently doing a sermon series on it and the Whitehorse Inn guys just did an excellent series of podcasts on it. It is amazing how clearly the sermon on the mount teaches grace and law. I’ve looked at this greatest of all sermons before:

The Sermon on the Mount
A Modern Person Reads the Sermon on the Mount

However, something hit me as I was preparing the material on the Reasonable Grace series. I’m a database programmer by trade, and finally my geekdom is paying off spiritually! Let’s say I have a list of shirts in a database, and I want to do a search. I can either do an “OR” search or I can do an “AND” search. An “OR” search means, give me all the shirts that are blue OR have buttons OR have collars OR are cotton. The results that are returned are called the “found set”, and the found set gets larger for each parameter added to the query. On the other hand, if I say, give me all the shirts that are blue AND have buttons AND have collars AND are cotton, then each parameter narrows down the results. The more parameters you add in an “AND” query, the less matches you end up with.

The beatitudes are an “OR” kind of condition. If you match any of the different beaten and losing and rejected conditions, you are in the set of people who are blessed. You don’t have to be a mourner AND a peacemaker to be blessed. You only have to be one or the other.

The portion of the sermon where He goes on to explain about living under the law is also an “OR” kind of condition. The problem is, if you match any of the conditions, you are cursed. Any particular match, such as lusting in your heart or being a little squishy with your words, and you are in the found set of the cursed people.

Jesus said that He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it:

17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
18 “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
19 “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:17-18

If you choose to interpret this as meaning that Jesus fulfills the requirement of the law and its punishing consequence for failure on the cross, you fall under the “blessed” query. You are the one who not only hungers for righteousness, and not only lacks it, but realizes their lack of righteousness and is internally tortured by it. You match one of the parameters to be included in the found set of the blessed people. You’re one of the few who escape being in the found set of the cursed.

If you choose to interpret this as meaning that Jesus has come to lay a more stringent requirement of Law on our backs, and that He may on the periphery be a savior but he is mainly a moral teacher, then you fall under the “cursed” query. You don’t have to hate your brother AND lust for a woman. Either one or any of the many others will do. The law casts a wide net and Jesus points out that when each condition is interpreted to the level of heart covetousness, it is a very finely meshed net indeed. If you fail any small piece of it, you match the found set of the cursed ones.

The net effect (no pun intended) is that if you want to be blessed under the law, the found set of those who don’t match the cursed query has to escape ALL of the conditions. You have to NOT be a hater, a luster, a liar, a poser, a worrier. Any single violation of them will put you into the found set of the cursed.

It is easy to see which dynamic is the better one: I am choosing to be included in the found set of the blessed. I choose to interpret Jesus’ fulfillment of the Law as being His work on the cross. It is Biblical, it is doable, and it is clearly what He is trying to say here. he says, you want to succeed under the law? You must escape ALL of these conditions or you will be cursed. Legalistic churches who miss the message Jesus is saying in the sermon here should be filled with eyeless amputees, but instead they are filled with pretenders and posers who could never fulfill the degree of perfect virtue Jesus espouses. He doesn’t mean to curse us by teaching so stringent a law, He means to push us over from trusting our own power to remain uncursed into the found set of the poor meek beaten hungry ones who admit defeat and are thus blessed.

Aren’t I violating the idea that the way is narrow and few are those who find it? (Matthew 7:13-14) If you are asking that question, you need to think about this: are you seriously going to interpret those verses (from the sermon on the mount!) in a way that contradict the beatitudes? It is always damaging to interpret scripture in a way that excludes grace. The way of blessing is indeed a narrow way, because most people want to trust in themselves to escape cursing by behaving perfectly, instead of receiving blessing as a one-way promise on account of their weakness. The narrow way is the way of grace.

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I haven’t posted in a while because I have been preparing the Reasonable Grace teachings, and I really post here when I feel I have what is for me a breakthrough insight. I’ve been thinking about the subject of this post a lot, and I hope it is clear and comes across as a breakthrough for you as well.

There is a particular paradox in Jesus’ new commandment which is an old commandment (1 John 2:7-8). He commands us to love one another, as He has loved us. There is some sense in which this old command to love has been updated into a new commandment, and there is something different to it now. It has been lifted out of old covenant dynamics and thinking to new covenant dynamics. I am seeking for this difference, for the simplicity and essence of the new commandment to love.

I have heard a lot of teachings about how love is a decision. Love is a commitment. Love is an action, not a feeling. It’s a silly Hollywood myth that we “fall” into love. Love is doable! My wife may be an impossible cold horrid shrew who has completely let herself go and smells bad on top of that, but I can choose to love her, it is my responsibility. Ephesians 5 COMMANDS us to love our wives as Christ loves the church. If some malodorous homeless alcoholic drug addict needs food, we don’t have to “like” them to love them in deed. We can feed them, take them to the homeless shelter, and have them out of our space, safe in the assurance that we did the deed Jesus would have wanted us to do. We don’t have to “like” people in order to “love” them. Love is a command!

I want to do an experiment. Let’s suppose that the “love is a decision” camp is wrong. Love is entirely undoable. We are powerless to force ourselves to love. It is in fact the one undoable thing! We may be able to let our enemy have our shirt and slap us around, but can we really bring ourselves to love him? It may make all the logical sense in the world to love the person our parents would have arranged for us to marry, but our own hearts are unfathomable and uncontrollable. All the other commandments depend on having genuine love and real affection for someone, and this is the main thing we seem to be incapable of really producing. We are powerless to change our affections. We are commanded to love, but we cannot do it.

Ah, you may say, but you are confusing romantic love with other kinds of love, brotherly love or perhaps agape love. You can command agape love because Jesus commands it. I would say that, whatever agape love means, love is love, and deeds devoid of affection and help devoid of compassion is the exact thing that Paul calls a clanging cymbal in 1 Corinthians 13:

1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3

When we say, I have to love you, but I don’t have to like you, I would like to know how that fits with 1 Corinthians 13 style love. It doesn’t. Of course we have to like people, and that is the very thing that we have to admit is very difficult, in fact it is impossible.

When you go out to buy a gift for your child, you don’t grit your teeth in the face of great mountains of dislike, to do what you must do. You are excited to buy the gift, because you think how overjoyed he will be, and rejoice at the thought. You take pleasure in their pleasure. You delight in fulfilling their desires and wishes. You rejoice to see them grow and mature.

This is difficult enough for our own family, our spouse and our children, our parents. However, I am not saying that we never have love in our humanity, in our pre-supernatural or unredeemed experience, this isn’t the point. We do love, everyone craves it and we all have tasted it! Just as we have a conscience and have a taste of holiness even when we are unrepentant prodigals, we know and crave love no matter who we are. I am not making the point that love is impossible altogether, I am making the point that love cannot be demanded or coerced. Law and threat and fear are incapable of producing love, it comes by other means altogether.

Love is not born of demand and coercion, it is born of grace. Love responds to love, to undemanded and unconditional affection. Love does not live and breathe and thrive under fear and control, it very naturally and completely resists these things. When a man declares his love for a woman, the fear is that she will not be able to see past his faults and sins and shortcomings to see the man he would be for her. Will there be grace, will she see past his warts and return love in kind? The only way love can be commanded is by means of grace, one way affection. We are to love as we have been loved:

16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.
20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.
1 John 4:16-21

So, like the fisherman frightened in the midst of the storm at sea, His command creates the result. He commands the wind and the waves, and it is calm. He commands us to love, and it is so. It is of grace, because love only responds to affection and not to coercion or force. Is this crazy? Maybe not:

19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him;
20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.
1 John 3:19-20

What is the point? God has power over our hearts, and is able to affect our hearts and produce change, not by brute miracle, nor by sheer authoritative command and threat of punishment. These are love under the old covenant, the old commandment to love. He commands us to love by the new commandment, under the new covenant, in which He writes the commandments on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10). He loves first, and so commands us to love by making it our flaming and true desire. Grace is love coming at us when we don’t deserve it, when we don’t love in return. By this means he draws us into the kingdom of grace, and births love in us.

When I discover a new musician or a new song which I really like, I want to share it. I don’t want to hide in a closet alone and listen to it. I want to share it. When the love which God has for me is manifested, when I come to understand it and believe it, I’m not inspired to be more selfish. I’m inspired to share it, to love those around me, because I have been so greatly loved myself. Grace inspires and enables love in a way that the raw demand and coercion of the requirement to love never could.

34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
35 “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13:34-35

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”
Romans 5:8

“We love, because He first loved us.”
1 John 4:19

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21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith
Romans 3:21-25

Something hit me the other day as I was preparing for a teaching. In this passage, Paul does not say that we are forgiven. Forgiveness is a squishy and difficult idea. The idea is that we have done some harm to someone, and in forgiving, they will endeavor not to hold it against us. It ends up being an unsatisfying solution, because in our conscience we know that it leaves our sin still sitting there unpunished and undealt with. Our lack of condemnation depends wholly on the strength of will of the one harmed, to continue to forget that we harmed them. We remain in their debt, they still hold a kind of power of extortion over us, even if they don’t want to.

Justification is different. It doesn’t say, you have done wrong, but I will try to forget it. It focuses on the wrong done, and says squarely, this was wrong. This was very wrong. It was unjust. Since justice is God’s love spread around to lots of sinners, our sin violated love. It needs to be publicly declared wrong, publicly punished, so that all will know that justice must be served for such a wrong done. Justification says, your sin was displayed publicly as worthy of condemnation and terrible punishment in Christ. When we say that we believe Christ died for our sins, we are not just forgiven, we are justified. In our conscience, as believers, we feel that we MUST say that justice has been served for our sins, because otherwise we make His terrible death on our behalf of no account.

This is the big difference between forgiveness and justification. Forgiveness leaves justice on the table, it leaves sin unpunished but unjustified. Among the brethren, we have something greater than forgiveness with one another. We have the understanding that their sin against us has been declared unjust and wrong with vengeance and violence. It has been abundantly addressed. I don’t have to think that I am just trying to forget what they have done to me or that they are trying to forget what I have done to them. Forgetting is not the issue or the power of attorney here. The blood of Jesus Christ is the power, and it is most certainly sufficient.

In the end, of ourselves, we can only forgive. We do not have the power to bear someone else’s punishment. As the psalmist says,

7 No man can by any means redeem his brother Or give to God a ransom for him–
8 For the redemption of his soul is costly, And he should cease trying forever–
9 That he should live on eternally, That he should not undergo decay.
Psalms 49:7-9

So, we can and should forgive 70 times 7 a day, because what is coming or what is needed has come: a savior who can justify us, who can pay truly for the redemption of our souls. However, in forgiving, we must not make the error of thinking that we are their savior, that we hold the power of attorney over them. True forgiveness on our part acknowledges that their justification in Christ is sufficient, and I refuse to say otherwise. Forgiveness under Christ is stronger than mere forgetfulness, it is constantly putting the sins of those around us under the terrible wrath displayed publicly on the cross. Justification is stronger and more lasting and makes more sense than forgiveness, because it accounts for the vengeance that our soul knows must be visited upon our various sins. In Christ, our conscience is washed clean, and we are free indeed!

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7 Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.
8 On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.
9 The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.
10 The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
11 But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. 1 John 2:7-11

After I posted yesterday, I began to think about something. The light would seem at first to expose character flaws and weaknesses. When I first got an HD television, my first thought wasn’t how much better it looked. My first thought was how much it exposed the actors, how you could see skin flaws and imperfections more easily. So more light, more exposure, doesn’t engender love, it engenders judgement. It makes one more embarrassingly naked. In marriage, when the intimate details of your life are suddenly shared together, it is a shock to see the level of dysfunction that another person can mask in courtship. Light at first glance does not promote love, it promotes scrutiny.

However, the true Light works differently. It exposes flaws to engender compassion, not judgement. It sees past surface flaws and imperfections and sees true worth. Before the true light shines love on them, we only saw their flaws and irritants. Love enables us to see. Peter Rollins puts it beautifully:

This is what love does. It does not make itself visible but rather makes others visible to us. Love does not exist but calls others into existence: for to exist means to stand forth from the background, to be brought into the foreground. Love does not stand forth but brings others forth. When we love our beloved is brought out of the vast, undulating sea of others. Just as the Torah speaks of God calling forth beings from the formless ferment of being so love calls our beloved from the endless ocean of undifferentiated objects. Peter Rollins, Love Beyond Existence

So, the true light is made of grace. It not only looks past faults, ignores flaws, forgives sin, it also seeks to bless and persists in favor when our beloved is underserving. Love is strong enduring unbreakable love.

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7 Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.
8 On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.
9 The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.
10 The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
11 But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. 1 John 2:7-11

We are the beloved! We are really only going to understand this stuff if we remember that he is writing to us as greatly loved.

Old and New
So, we have an old commandment, and a new commandment. It seems to be more important to John to figure out whether it is old or new than to specify what the commandment actually is! The old commandment is “the word which you have heard.” The new commandment isn’t really specified! We just know that it is true.

I don’t really see that he spells out what the commandment or commandments are. However, we know from John’s gospel that the new commandment is that we should love one another (John 13:34). Perhaps the sense of this is that the old commandment from the Old Testament amounted to love for one another (love God – first 3, love neighbors, last 7, Exodus 20). It isn’t as if love had never been commanded (Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18). The question we are looking for the answer to here is this: why does this matter? How is this same commandment old and new, and why should we care?

There is power in oldness. It is important that the wisdom of antiquity not be discarded or easily superseded. Often there is only self-serving fleshly harmful nonsense in the quest to be new, to only break with the past. Where there is disdain for the wisdom handed down there is likely disdain for truth, because truth cannot be the sole domain of this current generation.

On the other hand, there is power in the new. Where there is no endeavor to question, to discover, to see things in a fresh way, there is often also no truth. Slavish devotion to ancient wisdom deifies antiquity, and offends the spirit in which the men of antiquity received their revelation. In fact this is possibly the chief sin of the pharisees.

Jesus seizes on love as the hinge between the old and the new. He comes, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17-18). Love fulfills the ultimate purpose of the old covenant law, and becomes the center point of the new convenant. Love is the demand of the law, and the unction of the spirit. Later (1 John 4:10) John will turn this completely on its head and say that love is really about God loving us first, and not about us loving God.

Love is pivotal, and works in perfect concert with grace. Grace apart from love really is just license to be selfish and sinful. Love is the energy to true virtue, because it chooses kindness, it looks to the welfare of the other and serves. When we begin to see that God chooses kindness towards us, and is concerned not with our just condemnation but with our welfare and forgiveness, we also begin to wish to express the same kindness likewise to others.

The word which you have heard
This phrase pops up here as well as in Hebrews 2:1. It is a funny turn of phrase, because it turns us to thinking and remembering instead of spelling it out. It says, this isn’t some revelation you lack, or even some interpretation you can’t grasp. It is something you have heard, it is a word you have understood. It isn’t alien to you. In fact, it is an old commandment, and you are familiar with it. This isn’t some strange new teaching, and it isn’t rocket science.

True in Him and in us
The new commandment is true in Him, and also in us, the beloved. This is amazing, that there is something in Him that is also in me! Of course it would be true in Him, but it is also true in me? Yes it is!

This innocuous little phrase is most profound. It says, this old/new commandment, love, is the experiential connection between God and myself. It says, in this is love, my love for others, that God first loves me. Love is something I know, and this something I know is how God is. It is not fake in me. It is true in Him and in me. According to this scripture, love is a present reality in me and a similar present reality in God.

So, when we end up preaching and teaching in a way where people are saying, “this might be good, but it is hard to understand.” I think the answer is, we are talking around something which you already know. It is true in Him and true in you. We can be assured that there is not some secret knowledge we are missing, it IS true in us, and this present truth is the same present reality in Him.

Darkness passing away, true light shining
I was very impressed when a blog pointed out this quote from the Lord of the Rings, where after discovering that Gandalf is alive, Samwise exclaims,

“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

This is the state of things! There is surely darkness, there is much sadness. But the true light is already shining. The defeat of Jesus’ death has become untrue, life is more powerful than death. We believe that death is easily more powerful than life, but the true light of life is already shining.

On reflection, it seems to me that many times we are very timid to say that darkness is passing away and that the true light is winning. We are afraid because there is still darkness, and people are terribly impacted by the evil in the world. So we are afraid to say that the gospel does have its true effect. The scripture says the darkness is passing away. The scripture is clear that the true light of our joy and freedom and redemption in Christ is true light, it is eternal and enduring and of genuine substance.

What he is addressing here, I think, is a comfort that remains needful in this day and age. We doubt that we have authentic Christianity, authentic faith. We think that it is possible that there is some deep fundamental difference between the faith of the apostles and our faith. We fear that our knowledge of Him is theoretical

Love = vision and purpose vs. Hate = blindness and futility
It would seem that if someone doesn’t love his brother, he has a vision problem. There is something there, some beauty, some awesomeness, that he is unable or perhaps unwilling to see. Further, love involves vision, vision for the future. The one who loves his brother abides in the light, and has no cause for stumbling. If he has no cause for stumbling, this means that he is headed somewhere, and is able to avoid obstacles. Love engenders vision.

I believe this is probably true even in a business sense. If someone’s business is born out of an understanding of his customer, he has a much greater vision for making his products or services better for them. He can see the other person’s pleasure. If he only wants to make money, he sees the customer as an obstacle to the customer’s money, and has no vision for their welfare.

So my takeaway is that love puts eyes in your head, and gives you purpose and wisdom. Hatred blinds you and makes you stumble. Note that the hater does not know where he is going. So John does mean that we can think of vision not only in the sense of sight but of purpose. On reflection love makes you intelligent, hate makes you stupid. Love gives you purpose, hate makes you futile.

We ought not be flippant about assuming that we are not a hater. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Love is the big commandment, the new commandment. I’ve seen my boys act in the most obvious hateful ways towards one another and then swear they don’t hate each other. We have an enormous capacity for self-deception on this point. God, I confess my terrible lovelessness, and I pray for new and deeper and truer vision to love those in my family, my church, my work, and in my circle of friends and extended family. Help me to see them with new eyes and with a new heart! Amen.

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Not Enough?

I had a small discussion on facebook this morning, and I thought it was worth reposting here as a matter of record.

When Christ came to earth, He came to bring to mankind the gospel of the Kingdom. Over the centuries, the Church has tended to emphasize only a portion of the gospel. That portion is the gospel of salvation. However, Jesus came that we might have more than just salvation. He came to give us a whole new life that was accompanied by signs, wonders, and His Spirit living in us and revealing Himself to us daily. He came so that we might walk on this earth as He did. If our lives are not reflecting the same things as Jesus’ did, we must ask why?

I am seeing quite a bit of this kind of teaching. “For the longest time, the church has emphasized that the gospel means Jesus dying for our sins. How quaint! It might mean this, but it also means (pet idea goes here).” I have come to believe that it is right to emphasize that portion of the gospel, because it IS the gospel. There is no other portion. Paul didn’t say “I was determined to know nothing among you except the Holy Spirit and Him manifested.” He said “I was determined to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2) He did not say “For I am not ashamed of the Holy Spirit, for it is the power of God for salvation…”, he said, “For I am not ashamed of the GOSPEL, for it is the power of God for salvation…” (Romans 1:16-17) The gospel is a saving message, and this is the message: “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.” (Romans 3:24-25)

Romans 6 roots our sanctification wholly in this: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized INTO HIS DEATH, so that as Christ was raised from the dead we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-4)

Jesus Himself taught that forgiveness is more important than the miraculous, and that physical miracles are only meant to corroborate the message of forgiveness, Luke 5:22-24. He also taught that those who based their ministry in works of miracles were likely bereft of knowledge of Him, Matthew 7:21-23. He desires compassion above all things, Matthew 9:13.

Romans 8 and Romans 12 are meaningless out of context with Romans 3 – Romans 5. Ephesians 4 – Ephesians 6 is meaningless apart from Ephesians 1 – Ephesians 3. 1 John 2 – 1 John 5 is meaningless apart from 1 John 1:5-10. You cannot even strip Jesus’ one commandment, that we love one another, of the context of 1 John 4:10, that love is grounded in the propitiation. If the gospel isn’t the propitiation, we have nothing. On the cross, He did not cry out, “it is begun!” He cried out, “It is FINISHED!” (John 19:30) How dare we change that or marginalize it!

This is not to say that we ought not pray for miracles, or expect the miraculous. However, these things are not the gospel. The precious blood of Christ spilled for us is the gospel, and as the writer of Hebrews says, “how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3) We dare not marginalize it or add to it or change it.

You want to be zealous? Be determined to know nothing except Christ and Him crucified! When you start to see God as the One who is determined to redeem you and to grant you persistent overcoming one-way love, you will walk with such a sense of favor and compassion that miracles are surely inevitable. But do not be looking to become a person known for the miraculous. Become a person known for compassion and mercy, who is there for sinners. This is certainly walking as Jesus walked more than 1000 miracles.

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White as Snow

Reasonable Grace

Living under grace means living a convinced life as one greatly loved and greatly forgiven. It means living beyond obligation, beyond karma, beyond the cycle of reaping what you sow. Grace means radical kindness, love coming at you when you don’t deserve it, life redeemed and freed from the prison of ought. Life under grace is a life set free to live with a full joyous heart.

18 “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool. Isaiah 1:18

When issues of faith, of grace, of religion in general, are raised, often we feel defensive. Amazingly, according to the scripture, we are not told to suppress our defensiveness, but to embrace it. God asks us to come, to reason with Him, to become convinced of the reality of His mercy and grace. If we are defensive, it is important to consider what we are defending! Are we defending the freedom to be selfish, to live an isolated existence of self-absorbed pleasures? Are we defending the comfort of old and confining habits? Are we defending our right to continue to fail? Or are we defending our heart, are we pressing for that which has the ring of truth? Christ is not trying to do an end run around your doubts to trick you into an unwanted dead joyless virtue. He embraces your questions, welcomes your doubts; He is pressing you towards a life of simplicity and integrity of heart and mind.

We are extremely excited to offer a new six-week series called Reasonable Grace. We want to offer the whole community the opportunity to hear the liberating message of freedom and forgiveness in Christ, and to have the chance to have many common objections to faith addressed in a reasonable way.

Here is a list of topics which will be addressed in the 6 week course:

• Why does Christianity obsess about guilt and forgiveness? Why not just love and acceptance? Why is the cross the primary symbol of Christianity?
• Does grace violate justice? How can we not reap what we sow? Can karma really be broken? Does grace mean we don’t have to worry about being good at all? The miracle of faith in Christ is that it breaks the power of true justice that stands against us. We can live again as if fate were on our side, instead of stealing our pleasures against the power of our past.
• Christ and other religions. Jesus said “No one comes to the Father but through me.” What about other religions? Is it necessary or right for Christianity to remain so exclusive?
• Is faith intellectual suicide? The relationship between science and faith. There is a superficial discord between religion and science, but there is a deeper concord between them. Many scientists at all levels are people of faith, such as Francis Collins, the head of the human genome project, are publicly speaking and writing about this. We will talk about some of the things going on in this old debate, and give you some ways to think strongly and freely about the relationship between faith and science.
• Getting out of the prison of ought: breaking free of living by obligation to living a life of freedom in the Spirit. Many people think the Christian faith represents nothing more than a strict moral code to live by. Others teach that Christianity is actually the end of religion. Come hear about grace, God’s one-way love coming at you even though you don’t deserve it. Grace is living beyond obligation as one who is greatly loved, beyond what you merely ought to do, beyond earning favor. Grace is living in the world where everything is a gift.
• Theism / Atheism vs. Agnosticism: What atheism and theism agree on. There is knowable truth, and there really is a discernable reality to things beyond what is physically apparent. Atheists and theists agree about this, and agnostics are very much a part of the same dialog, giving their own dogmatic answers to the same questions. We live in a time when all three camps are coming out of the closet as evangelistic believers in things.
• Real Girls and Boys: Some people would say that we are only collections of water and biochemicals and genes, that we are nothing more than machines made of meat; we don’t really have freedom or choice. For such people, love and poetry and music and belief and joy and grief can all be boiled down to neuroscience and random chance physics. Some others would say that God so controls things that everything we choose and do is completely predetermined. The real message of the grace of God is freedom, and freedom means we are real individuals.
• The Bible: Strange antiquated mythology or truth from God the Creator? Why do some Christians get so fired up about the Bible, and call it “the Word of God”, when it seems so strange and difficult to read? Should God’s book have been a little more straightforward?
• Faith and Politics: keeping God and “Caesar” separate. Christianity is not in the least married to right-wing politics, this is a recent cultural aberration. Yet, it doesn’t seem right that we should check our beliefs in at the door when we vote. What is the right relationship between faith and politics? We might talk about sex in this session so we can be sure to offend everyone!
• Homosexuality: why won’t the Church bend on cherished moral issues? How can Christians talk about love and forgiveness and grace and yet be so mean and unyielding concerning someone’s private yearnings? The answer isn’t at all what most people fear.
• Hell: Are you kidding me? How does the message of love and grace fit with this horrible medieval teaching? We will talk some sense about an important yet touchy subject.
• Essential Christian Belief: freedoms and choices in the “Great Hall” of faith. Some aspects of Christianity are essential and true across all denominations and congregations. Beyond this there is freedom to dialog, to debate, to think differently. This session is all about finding your way in the crazy world of choosing a congregation.

We’re looking at starting this April 17th on Tuesday nights at 7 PM at Dakota Creek Christian Center in Blaine, WA.

Map to Dakota Creek, because wordpress has broken google map iframe inserts in the last stinking upgrade.