God is Judge

I am to my final attribute – it’s hard to believe. This has been an incredible journey of discovering God’s attributes, experience Him in a new way. This season of my life has been about His asking me to have a deeper trust and contentment with Him. It has not been easy, but as I learn to put my expectation in Him, in His attributes, I am satisfied. He really is enough. On Saturday, he said to me: “Just as your trust cannot be conditional to an understanding, so, too, your faith cannot be conditional to my ‘performance.’” 

My trust in Him is based on Him, who He said He is, who He has shown Himself to be. Period. It’s been a fun study for the last few months, and I invite you to read the old posts if you’ve not read attribute #1 - #10 (click the tag “attributes of God” for quick reading). 

The final attribute from Acts from 17:22-31 comes from verse31: “because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” 

#10: God is our Judge

I’ve put off writing this post because this attribute is not only intimidating, but it’s not very positive, either. Who wants to read about God judging the world—even if I do believe it? 

But as I asked God what do  You want me to write, I felt like He laid something much more important on my heart: God is Judge, and as such, it’s not my job, my responsibility, or my right to judge others. I have felt for a long time that Christians are more critical of others (Christians and non-Christians alike) than non-Christians are of anyone. 

My feelings were confirmed while reading a blog post about the judgment homosexuals face by Christians (or other religious groups). Several points that this writer makes are worth repeating:

“The greatest spiritual leaders in history have all preached love for others as the basis for all happiness, and never did they accompany such mandates with a list of unlovable actions or deeds. They never said, love everybody except for the gays. Love everybody except for the homeless. Love everybody except for the drug users. Love everybody except for the gang members, or those covered in ink, or the spouse abusers. They didn’t tell us it was okay to love everybody with the exception of the “trailer trash,” those living in poverty, or the illegal immigrants. They didn’t tell us it was okay to love everybody except for our ex-lovers, our lovers’ ex lovers, or our ex-lovers’ lovers. The mandate was pretty damn clear, wasn’t it?

Love others. Period.”

“I know there are many here who believe that living a homosexual life is a sin.
Okay.
But, what does that have to do with love?

I repeat… what does that have to do with love?

 Come on. Don’t we understand? Don’t we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be… doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs right.”

He concedes that he's not a Christian, and he ends the blog with this sort of “love others and you'll love yourself” thing, and of course, that’s not where I would take it. But here’s what I would say. He is absolutely right on two accounts: as Christians, we are commanded to love others, period; and two, we are commanded not to judge anyone. 

I’m not sure where we put that “load” upon ourselves, but it should be freeing to know that we don’t have to carry it. It was freeing for me, anyway. It released me from worry about how God would deal with Person A who does x, y, or z – whether we’re talking about homosexuality or clubbing, prostitution or tattoos. I mean, God couldn’t possibly save person A who does x, y, or z, right? How did we, as the Church, get to labeling sins and categorizing them among a hierarchy of deeds? Well, those are “lifestyle” sin, some might argue. Yes, and so is my daily my struggle not to fear man. Is my fear of man more than fear of God any less problematic? Absolutely not. And yet, no one (at least that I know of) is questioning my salvation. 

Jantzen Louder preached a few weeks ago, and at one point in his message, he made the comment that everyone should have at least one friend who is not a Christian. He didn’t mean a passing knowledge of a person who’s not a Christian, but a relationship with a non-Christian. I’m sure this was shocking for some, but for me, it was encouraging to finally hear someone say it from the pulpit. 

However, if you would have asked me 8 years ago if I knew a single non-Christian, my answer would have been “no.” In high school, all my friends were Christians. And in college, I fell into the same group. And that’s why I thank God that I met Jane* my senior year at ASU. Jane and I worked together, and after a week of working together, I knew she was a lesbian, and she knew I was a Christian. At that time, I had no idea how to handle knowing and working with a lesbian (gasp, I know). But God told me this: I love her as much as I love you or anyone else. And I said okay, then I love her, too. After working together for a month, we had this conversation:

Jane: “You know I’m gay, right?”

Me: “Yes, I gathered.”

Jane: “So, now you’ll tell me how wrong it is, right? It’s a sin? And I’m going to hell?”

Me: “No, I don’t think I’m anyone to decide who gets to go to heaven and who has to go to hell.”

Jane: Pausing for a moment, clearly confused. “Well, I know what all the Bible says about homosexuality. I’ve read the verses, not just the Old Testament, but in Romans 1, too.”

Me: “Then, I don’t guess there’s anything you’d need to know.”

Jane: “So… okay then.”

Me: “Okay then.”

Jane and I went on to be friends, and we still keep in touch from time to time. And today, I have lots of people in my life who hold different beliefs than I do. And for some of them, they’re not just people I know in passing; they’re people I love and respect deeply. And, more importantly, I'm not friends with them to save them, convince them, or change them. If you think being friends with non-Christians is about having "projects," you've missed the point. And if you think it's your job to defend or sell Christianity, you've missed the point, again.

I know that I can’t, for one second, pretend that I have all the answers about sin, anyway. My response to Jane is as true today as it was 8 years ago: “I don’t think I’m anyone to decide who gets to go to heaven and who has to go to hell.” 

Here’s the truth: anyone with any understanding how wretched we are in our sin, anyone with an understanding of how amazing His grace is—in short, anyone who “gets” the depravity from which we were saved—should know this: Who am I to judge?  

“A new commandment I give you to, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

*Jane was not her real name.

God is Not Confined by Man-Made Artifacts

It's hard to believe I'm on my second to last attribute in my list from Acts 17:22-31: God is not man-made nor is He confined by man-made artifacts. Verse 30 tells us that we ought not to think that He is like "gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising." Paul's reference to gold and silver and stone here is a direct reference to man-made idols, gods worshiped by the Greeks (at this point, he is in Athens). Today our nation may not have golden statues that we worship (though other nations certainly do), but we have plenty of things we idolize. That's not what I want to say this morning though...

Similar to the third attribute (God is boundless), God is not contained by our man-made creations, and I would dare say our biggest failure as Christians is that we, in this nation, have reduced God to Sunday morning church.

Not only is God's presence everywhere, but His Holy Spirit lives inside of me. If we are the body of Christ, then we also are the Church. This struck me in particular Saturday night at church. Pastor Jackie was pretty fired up preaching about service, our mandate to serve one another. His last point was that we serve to right injustices. The point of our Christian walk is not to fill a pew and get comfy - it's to go out and serve! And to do that, we don't have to take a trip halfway around the world. Places like the Dream Center minister to the poor in our city - right here in Lubbock!

In fact, Jackie talked a lot about our mandate to serve the poor and widows. That's why he has such a heart for the Slaton-Bean area. The Church, Christians, should be the ones serving those in need, those in crises, those in abusive situations, those in poverty and with poverty mindsets.

I am so thankful to be a part of a church, and under a pastor, who serves our city and our world. This year, we will send 150 people out to places all over the world, like Kenya, India, Czech Republic, and Guatemala, to serve. We give some 30% of our budget to missions organizations where most churches are lucky if their staff gives 10% away. And we have people who serve at the Dream Center daily, ministering to those in need in our city.

And what I love about the Dream Center is its goal to train and raise up generations out of poverty. Sure, we give away food and clothes to hundreds of families each week, but we also offer after school programs, G.E.D. classes, and job-search skills, like resume-building and interview strategies.

But it's not just about what my church is doing; it's about what I'm doing. When we got home, I kept thinking about our mandate to serve the poor. Personally, I am sometimes skeptical of government welfare programs because, for one, I know that the programs get abused by those who would take advantage of free money. When I worked at United Supermarkets, it always irked me when I would sack groceries for a WIC family and then carry the groceries out to a brand new Escalade. Secondly, I was raised to always take a job, to always work, no matter how "beneath me" the task may be. But on Saturday, God said to me, if the Church would do its job, there'd be no need for the government to run welfare programs. The welfare of the poor and the job-less is and has always been the Church's responsibility. 

Instead, we are worrying about building 20 million dollar buildings and buying fancier stuff to fill our pews. If every church in every city served the poor, the job-less, the homeless, and those abused, we wouldn't have a welfare problem.

Jackie is right: we have a mandate to serve. And we have a mandate to serve those in unjust situations, to right injustices. And poverty is an injustice. We are the Church - you and me - and our purpose is no more about filling a pew than God's attribute is about being contained within the four walls of a church.

Jesus said that He didn't come to be served, but to serve. If you're waiting for "The Church" to do something in our nation, stop. You are the Church. I am the Church. Let's do one thing today, this week, this month, to serve others.

Eph 1 & 2 --Part 1

God's love for us is so evident in his redeeming story that he created. His heart from the beginning was to be in relationship with his creation. When he created Adam and Eve, he had the purest relationship with them. They spent their days together in the garden.

But God's love is not forced to be reciprocated. It never has been. He created us to respond to him, but we have the freedom to choose. And so, Adam and Eve chose to sin. They chose to do so because they were allowed to rebel. Thus, sin entered the world.

But God's love is so immeasurable and everlasting. And he never gave up on his creation. So, he created a way to restore the relationship again. He sent his son to be the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, to bridge the gap once and for all between us and God. The cross speaks of his grace and mercy on our sins, but the greater purpose was motivated by love--his love that wants a relationship with us, as pure and unadulterated as what he had with Adam and Eve in the garden.

But there is this idea that this "relationship" won't exist until heaven. That we're just hanging out here on earth, doing the best we can, despite ourselves, until that glorious day when we'll all fly away.

We are a body of believers no better than the sleeping virgins who weren't ready when the bridegroom came. In Ephesians 5:25-27, Paul writes, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." Do you think God expects the Church to be holy and without blemish after Jesus returns? Absolutely not! This is clearly about Jesus' heart for his bride, for what he wants to see her look like now: sanctified, cleaned through the word, holy, blameless.

The process of sanctification is like the process of refinement--maybe testing and trials; life will feel heated, but God is shaping you, purifying you, making you holy and set apart.

In Ephesians 1, we're told that we've been blessed with every blessing in heavenly places. And again, we see the sovereignty of the God--who knew his plan from before time, that he would bring restoration to us. It was according to his will that we are accepted in the beloved, that we are redeemed and forgiven. In verse 9, it says that the mystery of his will was revealed--that mystery being his purpose through Christ to "united all things in him, thing in heaven and things on earth."

So we see that the redemption and restoration of all things to himself was not only for eternity. It was for right now. It was for the relationship that God desired to have with his creation. And it was for the sanctification of us as a body, as a bride.

Go to Part 2.