“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (James 4:10)
My
family recently returned from a trip to Fresno, California, to see relatives. It
can be a roughly 12-hour drive from
there to Salem. However, as you can imagine, the journey is a bit delayed when
you have a one-year-old (Weston) and a three-year-old (Logan) accompanying you.
They actually both took a couple naps going both directions, which made things
go a little smoother. But, alas, even I was asking, “Are we there yet?” by the
15th hour on the road.
After
pulling into our driveway at zero dark thirty, the first thing Whitney and I
noted when stepping into our house was how chilly it felt. We soon realized
that our furnace was not working, and, perhaps, had not been working for close
to a week. My first thought was: I can do
this. I’ve fixed things like this before. I hoped this would be a quick fix,
but unfortunately, I had to call it quits when I could not figure it out after
an hour of fruitless effort. I had to go to work the next morning, so I decided
to try my hand at fixing it that evening as soon as I got home. When nothing I
tried seemed to be panning out, I turned to YouTube, the fount of DIY (Do-It-Yourself)
wisdom.
Sadly,
I kept bumping into one disappointment after another. Just when I thought I’d
solved the problem, something else turned out to be the “real” issue. The more
things I tried and failed, the more I read up on what can cause furnace
malfunctions. By the end of the weekend, I felt like I knew every nook and
cranny of my furnace, something I’d hardly looked at in the two and a half
years we’ve lived in our home. The worst part is, despite the plethora of
knowledge I had acquired on home furnaces, I still had not fixed it, and our
home was beginning to feel more like an igloo.
I
decided now was probably a good time to reach out for help. I called up two
family members who are more mechanically inclined, one of which was my father-in-law.
Rob, who my sons call “Pappy,” gladly agreed to stop by. Before he arrived, my three-year-old,
Logan, came into the garage to watch me struggle for a few minutes more.
“Dad,”
he said, in his sweetly matter-of-fact tone, “I think you should just stop and
let Pappy fix it.”
Out of the mouths of babes. Ah,
yes, it was plain to even my young son that I did not have the mechanical
skillset requisite to finish the job. It is a humbling thing to ask for help
and admit you do not know as much as you thought you knew.
I
cannot help observing that a similar thing can happen in our approach to
knowing God. How many different views on God are out there? How many different opinions
on Jesus Christ are floating around in our culture alone? There is an in-built
tendency for all of us to think we have things figured out, as if we intuitively
know what God approves of and what our purpose in life is.
But
we are mere humans. We cannot fathom the depths of God’s mind. It is a marvel
that He has mercifully revealed anything to us.
The
Apostle Paul exulted in God’s greatness:
“Oh,
the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are
His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the
Lord, or who has been His counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to Him that He
might be repaid?’ For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To
Him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36)
The
only right posture in approaching a holy God of this magnitude is humble submission.
“But
He gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace
to the humble.’ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he
will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse
your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched
and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to
gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you” (James 4:6-10).
God
is eager to shower us with grace and cancel our guilt. The question we all
should be asking is: Do I see my need for
grace? “Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your
evaluation of yourselves” (Romans 12:3a, NLT). That is why God, after surveying
all the wonders of the heavens, says, “All these things My hand has made, and
so all these things came to be… But this is the one to whom I will look: he who
is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).
Is
that how you approach God’s holy and perfect Word? Do you tremble at what it
means that God has spoken to you? When you turn to a passage in the Bible, do
you understand that you are about to encounter the Creator of the universe? Have
you seen how desperately you need to hear from Him? And have you recognized
just how shallow your wisdom is apart from Him?
Take the gospel for example. No mere human could have devised a plan where God’s holy and beloved Son ends up staked to a cross in order to accomplish our redemption. That is why “Christ crucified” is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23). “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (v. 21).
As it turns out, we do not have everything figured out. And we don’t know as much as we think we know. Certainly, we should turn to “God-breathed” Scripture for the divine wisdom we all need (2 Timothy 3:16). But let’s resolve to approach the Bible with the posture of humility, acknowledging the infinite gap existing between our relatively puny minds and the mind of our all-knowing God. And let’s thank Him for loving us enough to speak to us.
“Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21)
“God’s
power is at its greatest not in his destruction of the wicked but in his taking
all the wickedness of the earth into himself and giving back love.”[1]
I
recently heard in the news about the unfortunate strife that led to the
collapse of a sports team with a lot of talent. Various sports commentators
discussed who was to blame for the team’s gradual demise. One television
personality even gave out certain percentages of blame to various persons
involved in the whole debacle. Before long, various teammates and coaches began
to voice who they thought should be blamed. Interestingly, not one person pointed
his thumb at his chest and said, “Yeah, it’s all my fault.”
Masters at Blame Shifting
Have you ever noticed how powerful your need to justify your own actions is? Why is that so often we are quick to blame in others what we would gladly excuse in ourselves? When the other team cheats or the other person lies, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But when our team gets caught cheating or we get found out, we shrug and quip, “Well, everybody does it.” Why is it that whenever we are accused of something, our gut reaction is either to go into hiding or fight with all our might to clear ourselves of all blame? Deep in our bones, we know that we cannot shoulder our own guilt. Our troubled conscience testifies to this. We need a way out.
We attempt to write off our guilty feelings as nothing more than social conditioning, or perhaps our parents’ strict disciplinarian methods fobbed off onto our psyche. We tell ourselves that we are not really that bad. After all, it is those other people in our lives that are the real problem. We both subtly and not so subtly affix guilt to our parents, our spouse, our boss, or our children. We even manage to paint them in a negative light with an “understanding” tone. We are masters at blame shifting. Can anyone really argue that this is not true of the human heart? We are constantly scouring the universe for someone else to be the scapegoat, when in our heart of hearts we know we are blameworthy.
The unwillingness to own up to our guilt seems to be a perennial problem. Remember what Pontius Pilate did after sentencing Jesus to death? He washed his hands before the crowds, as if to clear himself of all guilt for the blood of this righteous man. Very similarly, Shakespeare has Lady Macbeth desperately trying to wash her hands clean after her part in the murder of Duncan. “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” she wails. “Here’s the smell of blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”[2] We see this same dynamic when politicians or corporate executives plead ignorance when investigators catch them in a scandal.
So what does this self-justifying strategy say about us? It says something about our moral condition. The Bible explains our own condition to us. We are made in God’s image, and that is why we know right from wrong (Genesis 1:26-27). We know that guilt demands punishment. We know this. And yet, we also know that we have not even lived up to our own standards of right and wrong — let alone God’s standard of perfection. Scripture makes it clear that every human being finds him or herself in this quandary: we are both those who know what we ought and ought not to do and those who know we have failed to live up to these moral obligations. So, what are we to do about this predicament?
The Intolerable Burden
When we come face to face with the Law of God, we all know we fall short. “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (Romans 3:19). When a shameful thing we have done or said in the past rises to the surface in our mind, we sense the weight of our guilt all over again. We can identify with Thomas Cranmer, when he wrote in The Book of Common Prayer:
“Almighty God, Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men, we acknowledge and bewail
our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously
have committed, by thought, word and deed, against thy Divine Majesty,
provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly
repent and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings. The remembrance of them
is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable.”
In John Bunyan’s allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, the protagonist Christian bears an “intolerable” burden on his back. The great load represents the weight of his own sin, which grows more burdensome as he reads from a book. “He opened the book, and as he read, he wept and trembled.”[3] That is what Scripture does: it exposes our guilt so that we suddenly see the sinfulness of sin. But — and this is of infinite importance — it does not leave us to wallow in our guilt. It is right at this point that we begin to see our genuine need for the gospel of the crucified and risen Messiah. Our guilt demands punishment, and the more we know of God’s holiness, the more we are desperate to be free… and the more we long to be made new.
God’s Great Love
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,
he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All
this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to
Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the
message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19).
In a world where we are persistently trying to shift the blame to someone else, God Himself shifted the blame from us to His own Son, Jesus Christ. Why? What could possibly lead a loving Father to do this? God “did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). To spare us from eternal judgment, He could “not spare His own Son.” The only way not to count our trespasses against us was to count our trespasses against Jesus. For God to overlook sin would mean that He would cease to be holy and just. God would cease to be God, and that could never happen. In order for God to uphold the moral order of the universe, He must deal justly with our great offense against Him. Someone had to go through the fire of judgment. God’s great love went out to meet the demands of His perfect justice.
Therefore, the Son of God bowed His head to the Father’s will and did just that. The very “punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6). Jesus received the cruelty of man and the wrath of God both without protest. Our Lord never once disobeyed His Father. He was utterly pure, spotless, and clean. “Yet it was the will of Yahweh to crush Him” (v. 10). He willingly laid down His life in obedience to His Father’s command.
The Free Gift
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we
might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV).
We long to be in the right before men and women. However, our most urgent need is to be in the right before our Maker. In biblical language, what we need most is righteousness. The marvelous truth of the gospel is that we have God’s own righteousness offered to us through the cross. As Martin Luther put it, a “great exchange” took place at the cross. Christ took our sin, so that we might receive His righteousness. He bears our guilt, and we are clothed in His perfection. Out of His abundant love and mercy, God urges you to lay down your defenses and receive the forgiveness He purchased with His Son’s death.
While
we are anxiously striving to justify ourselves day after day, the gospel is about God justifying us for
all time. The Apostle Paul explained it this way: “But now apart from the
law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the
Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to
all who believe” (Romans 3:21-22, NIV). Read that last sentence again. Divine
righteousness comes to us as a free gift through simple faith. All we must do
is turn from sin to God, entrusting ourselves to the tender and secure hands of
Jesus.
We do not pay off the great debt we owe. Jesus takes that debt for us. Oh, sweet release! Complete divine forgiveness is offered to us as a free gift! What could possibly be better news than this? The cross answers the great question, “How can I, a sinner, be made right with a holy God?” The answer: through faith in Jesus Christ and His sacrificial death on the cross for us.
Jesus really did die on Calvary for all our sins, but He did not stay dead. The tomb is still vacant. “Fear not,” He says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17b-18). As we approach the celebration of our Lord’s death and resurrection from the grave, let us remember the chief need for every person on the planet is that we be reconciled to the God of love. “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
[1] J.
N. Oswalt, “Isaiah,” in New Dictionary of
Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), eds. T.
Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner, 222.
“I form light and
create darkness,
I make well-being and create calamity,
I am the LORD, who does all these things.” (Isaiah 45:5-7)
Just how sovereign is the God of the Bible? When one
considers the endless stream of chaos, violence, and injustice reported on both
local and national news stations, it could be very hard to believe that God really
is in control.
The Bible describes God as infinitely loving,
righteous, and good (Psalm 34:8; 145:17; 1 John 4:8). In fact, Scripture reminds us that if there is
one thing we can absolutely count on, it is that every single good thing we
have has come to us from the loving hand of our Father in heaven (James 1:17).
Friendship. Love. Family. Income. Health. A loving community of believers. The
food in our stomach. The mocha I drank this morning. The car I drove to work
in. Even the seemingly insignificant trivialities in life that brighten my day.
They all come to me as undeserved gifts from a Father who delights to shower me
with His love. This is important for me to remember, because apart from God’s
grace, I would quickly lapse into the worst kind of pessimism.
That being said, what are we to make of all this
evil and perversity in a world run by a good and holy God? In light of all the
suffering in the world, atheists such as Richard Dawkins frequently say the burden
of proof is on those who claim an all-powerful deity exists. Psalm 115:2 says
that the nations may taunt, “Where is their God?” But our response will always
be, “Our God is in heaven and does as He pleases” (v. 3). However, if we are
honest, we can admit it is sometimes difficult to see this.
Repeatedly, Scripture reminds us of God’s
all-pervasive sovereignty. “The Lord has established His throne in the heavens,
and His sovereignty rules over all” (Psalm 103:19, NASB). “The Most High rules
over the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will and sets over it the
lowliest of men” (Daniel 4:17). In fact, God’s sovereign control is so
meticulous that every roll of a dice or flip of a coin is determined by Him
(see Proverbs 16:33). Thus, God decides the outcome of every NFL game that goes
to overtime.
Why So Much Suffering?
But the question remains: If God really is in
total control, why is the world so filled with evil and suffering? Upon a
moment’s reflection, one can see that this is a tragedy-stricken world. We see
bitter racism, hostile international aggression, lawsuits filed between those
who once professed undying love for each other, and terrible diseases
afflicting little babies. How are we to make sense of this conundrum? This
question quickly flees the realm of the theoretical when either you or someone you
love is struck by grief, tragedy, or betrayal.
In the biblical worldview, we are reminded that
all suffering, disease, and death is the result of Adam’s fall into sin (see
Romans 5:12). Although he was one man, that rebellion had a cataclysmic effect
on all creation. We may downplay the seriousness of sin, but it always has
consequences that extend even to the creation we inhabit. The natural world is
subject to frustration, in “bondage to corruption,” and “groaning together in
the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:20-22). Adam led the way, but by
extension, the whole human race is described as being in revolt against our
Maker, suppressing the truth that He is righteous and we are not (Romans
1:18-21; 3:10).
It is into this broken world that God sent His
dearly beloved Son to suffer alongside us as a human being and ultimately bear
the infinite debt we owed for opposing God’s design and purpose, so that we
might be totally forgiven and reconciled to Him (2 Corinthians 5:18-21). God
loved us even when we hated Him (Romans 5:8-11). Jesus, the God-man, can
“sympathize with our weaknesses,” pain, and frustrations, because He lived as
one of us, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). In other words, God has proven
through the cross that He has not abandoned us. Because of Christ’s atoning
work, one day He will usher in a new creation where there will be no more pain,
tears, or death (Revelation 21:1-5). We must cling to this unspeakably precious
truth. At this point, you may be thinking, That
is all true, but what about the suffering we still have to deal with today?
“I Am Yahweh, Who Does All These Things”
Many have proposed the solution is admitting
God’s limited ability or knowledge, but Scripture everywhere rules that out.[1] Apparently, our comfort in
suffering cannot be that God tried His best, but was simply unaware or unable
to do anything about it. Remarkably, God often emphasizes the extent of His
sovereignty in the very context in which the most heinous evil is described
(see Genesis 45:5-8; 50:15-20; Acts 2:22-23; 4:27-28). Isaiah makes this very
point when he quotes God declaring how He will equip the ungodly King Cyrus to
accomplish His purpose.
“I am the LORD, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God;
I equip you, though you do not know me,
that people may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is none besides me;
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness,
I make well-being and create calamity,
I am the LORD, who does all these things.”
(Isaiah 45:5-7)
Notice God intentionally describes the full spectrum over which He has control: “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things” (v. 7). The Hebrew word for “calamity” is ra (רָע) , which is most often translated “evil.” Although we may hesitate to credit God with having perfect control over all evil, our Lord is not. God seems to be going out of His way in Isaiah 45:5-7 to declare His sovereignty in all its fullness. Both good and evil occur according to His providential will. God is obviously not the direct cause of evil — He is spotless and holy. Nevertheless, He indirectly permits every instance of evil. If He did not, He would not really be sovereign. In fact, if something happened outside of His control, He would not truly be Yahweh, the God of Scripture. That is the whole point of saying, “I am Yawheh, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am Yawheh, who does all these things” (vv. 6b-7). God is the one who purposefully “works all things according to the counsel of His will” while nevertheless remaining perfectly righteous in all His ways (Ephesians 1:11).
The Greatest Comfort in Suffering
So, what’s the point? Just this: there is untold comfort in knowing and
believing that God really is in control over all of creation. When pain and
suffering rock our world, we can easily feel like we are drowning in a current
of chaotic emotions. Fighting desperately to keep our head above water, we can
struggle to believe that God is even real in those moments. Isaiah says Yahweh
is a God who at times seems to hide Himself (Isaiah 45:15).
However paradoxical it may seem
initially, the thing that will bring us the most hope and solace in the midst
of our suffering is the reality of God’s absolute control – the truth that
nothing can ultimately thwart His sovereign will. No matter how many times we
get knocked to the ground, we can know that our King is never knocked off His
throne. That is why we can trust Him when He says, “Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (v. 22).
This is not a provisional salvation, but an assured “everlasting
salvation” (v. 17). If God truly is sovereign, then we can bank on
His promise to use every instance of evil in our life to bring about His good
purposes. We can be certain that our suffering is not meaningless. “And we know
that for those who love God all things work
together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans
8:28). Perhaps no truth is more comforting while we walk through pain and
suffering than knowing that in the midst of all the chaos and confusion, God is
working for our ultimate good and His everlasting glory.
Obviously, His moral will can be resisted by His
rebellious creatures.[2] We’re
not merely pawns on the cosmic chessboard, but free moral agents who are
responsible for the choices we make. Yet, even this is only because He, the
omnipotent Creator, allows us to go our own way. God’s providential plan
for the universe — even His meticulous sovereignty — can never be
thwarted by human evil. Think of it: He can even choose to rescue His people
through a wicked man like Cyrus, who doesn’t even know Him (Isaiah 45:1, 4-5).
That is why He is a God worthy of our total allegiance and worship (v. 23).
When suffering afflicts us, we are often surprised by it, but God never is surprised by our suffering. And that is the truth that will be our lifeline pulling us through the agony of hardship.
[1]
“Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great
power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you” (Jeremiah
32:17; also see v. 27; Matthew 19:26; Luke 1:37). “Even before a word is on my
tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether” (Psalm 139:4; also see Jeremiah
23:24; Daniel 2:22; Matthew 6:4).
[2]
Think of any time we break one of the Ten Commandments, which are an expression
of His holy will for human life.
The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt van Rijn
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him… “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:20, 24).
Is it possible for any one of us to be too far gone from God’s perspective? Some may think so. They imagine God to be patient with people, but that eventually His patience runs out. In Christian circles, I often hear people describe certain individuals as “the hard cases” — those who seem so stubbornly resistant to God and His love that they are, we imagine, beyond hope.
I recently heard a man tell his story of Jesus rescuing him when he was at his absolute lowest point in life. He had been living on the streets, was addicted to heroin, and despised anything with a whiff of Christianity. Yet, to his astonishment, he crossed paths with a young woman who told him about the love God had for him in Jesus Christ. Many years later, in God’s marvelous timing, this man cried out to God for mercy, and God opened his heart to receive Christ. Although change in his life took time, he was immediately aware that he was a new man. Over the next few years, his life transformed dramatically. Thinking back to what God had done in his life, he said he now felt like “God’s trophy” of grace that God could show off to the world, as if to say, “Look what I can do in someone’s life.”
Relationship over Religion
When Jesus of Nazareth showed up on earth, He said some strange things. For example: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). To many, this sounded confusing. Wait, Jesus wants to hang out with those who rebel against God? I thought He only wanted to be with the morally upright? They even nicknamed Jesus “friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19). It was meant as an insult. Jesus pointed these Pharisees (admired for their obedience to the law) back to Hosea 6:6, where God says, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” In other words, God was saying, “I don’t merely want your ritualistic sacrifices thoughtlessly brought to me like Baal or one of the countless other pagan gods. I want you to know Me.”
Jesus told a story to some of the religious elite in His day that captured what the heart of God is really like. These religious do-gooders imagined that they were on God’s good side. “After all,” they seemed to say, “Surely God will take into account all our moral efforts.” What they missed, however — and what I fear many who grew up in the church miss — is that God is more interested in a relationship with His children than with religious compliance.
A Lost Son
“There was a man who had two sons,” Jesus began (Luke 15:11). The younger, impetuous son had the audacity to ask his father for his share of the inheritance that was coming to him. Even today, if someone asked a parent for his inheritance early, they would be frowned upon. In ancient times, however, this would have been the equivalent to saying, “Father, I wish you were dead.” The younger son wanted his father’s stuff, but cared little for the father himself. But it is even more surprising that the father actually complied with his son’s wishes. The community would expect the father to revoke any expected inheritance and shun his son as an insolent boy.
Jesus goes on to say this foolish son travels to a “far country,” presumably so he can get away from his father and out from under all the household rules and restrictions. Now, in this land of the Gentiles, this Jewish boy was free to gratify every desire that was forbidden in his father’s house. No doubt this young man attracted many. He wore the finest robes, ate the most scrumptious meals, and had everything money could buy. This young fool squandered all his father’s hard-earned wealth on prostitutes and whatever else he craved in the moment (v. 30).
But eventually, this fool began to reap what he had sown. Just as he spent his final coin, a terrible famine afflicted the land. Therefore, Jesus says, “he began to be in need” (v. 14). The harsh realities of the fleeting satisfaction of sin, the transitory nature of wealth, and the unpredictable vagaries of life in a fallen world all came crashing down on him in a moment. In desperation, “he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs” (v. 15).
Jews considered swine “unclean” (Leviticus 11:7). To be hired by a Gentile to feed such animals was just shameful. It gets worse though: “He was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything” (Luke 15:16). Here was a man at the lowest of lows. Only a short time ago, he was the envy of the neighborhood, as he spent his wealth on every thrill and entertainment imaginable. Now, he sat in his rags, wallowing in the mud like a beast, envious of filthy swine because they at least had their pig slop.
He Came to Himself
It was in that pigsty that a thought occurred to him. For a season, the young man had attempted to push away any thought of his father altogether. But now, the thought of the man he had once so brazenly scorned entered his mind. “How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread,” he mused, “but I perish here with hunger!” (v. 17).
Jesus says, “He came to himself,” finally recognizing what a fool he had been. All the so-called friends he had acquired recently came and went with his cash. None of them had even the slightest care for him now that he was nothing but a miserable worm in their eyes. The painful thought dawned on him: he had turned his back on the one man who genuinely loved him. But after such a gross display of rebellion, would his father ever take him back, this son who had so impudently slapped him across the face by wishing he was dead?
As he starts the long journey home, the young man prepares his “I’m sorry” speech, reciting in his mind: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants” (vv. 18-19). The confession is sincere, no doubt, but from his plea we can hear the sickly strain of legalism. He calls himself “unworthy,” and he was certainly right, so far as that goes. But he imagines his only hope is for his father to graciously hire him as a slave. Perhaps he imagines he can one day pay off his grievous debt as a last-ditch effort to gain his father’s approval. It is significant that the only reason he’s willing to return home, with head hanging in shame, is his realization that the one he once called “Abba” is unlike anyone else he knows. His father is a generous man, eager to bless others.
His Father Saw Him
“And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion,” (v. 20). Oh, what precious words are these! While this pitiful son was still in the distance, perhaps before he ever saw his father, his father saw him. The father, who had been faithfully gazing at the horizon, finally saw that for which he had long hoped. But what a miserable looking fellow: dressed in rags, weak and starving frame, and covered in filth and shame. He was perhaps the most wretched and unlovely creature his father had ever seen. And yet, his father “felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (v. 20).
The ancient Greeks loved to show off their calves, but for a Jewish nobleman to gather up his flowing robes and race down the road in a dead sprint would have been unheard of. In fact, it would have brought him dishonor in the eyes of others. Do you see what is happening here? Whereas before the shameful sight would have been this stumbling reject returning to his home, now the father has, in a sense, traded places with his son. Because of his great love for his son, he is now the one bearing the shame. The son would return home not alone, but under the protective arm of his father.
The onlookers must have stared in amazement. Had not this pathetic fool spat in his father’s face? And now his father receives this rebel without a cause with open arms? Before the broken man can get a word out, his father is holding him against his chest and planting a kiss on his head. In fact, in the original Greek, it says, the father “kept on kissing him.” Can you imagine a more lavish display of acceptance? When was the last time you were greeted this way at a family reunion?
With quivering lips, the son tries to get out his confession and make his plea, but before he can even ask to be made a slave, the father interrupts him. “Bring quickly the best robe,” he commands the nearest servant, “and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet” (v. 22). The robe, the ring, and the shoes all symbolize one thing: this young man is the master’s son, not slave.
Though tears no doubt fill the father’s eyes, he loudly proclaims a feast will be held in his son’s honor. This is no time to mourn. It is time to celebrate! “For this my son was dead, and is alive again! He was lost, and is found!” As the New Living Translation puts it: “So the party began” (v. 24).
Our Compassionate Father
What follows at the end of this grand story that Jesus tells is actually the most disturbing. The elder brother, who is working out in the fields (as always), learns of his brother’s return and, rather than rejoicing, he responds with smug self-righteousness. How dare this foolish sinner show his face around here again!
The father, in yet another display of compassion and grace, goes out to the field and pleads for his elder son to come home. But, with curled lip, the elder son replies, “Look, these many years I have served you [literally, “slaved for you”], and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” (vv. 29-30). The elder son’s bitter tone betrays his failure to ever really love his father. He sees all his acts of obedience as joyless slavery. He wanted to celebrate with “friends,” but never to delight in the father himself.
The tragedy is that although this elder son stayed home, he was just as lost as the younger son once was. The father tells him, “All that is mine is yours.” In other words, if you had only asked to delight in what is mine, I would have gladly celebrated with you. The younger son, though a wretched sinner, had returned to the arms of his father, recognizing the generosity of this old man. “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (15:32).
Jesus told this parable so that we would have a renewed understanding of God. Norval Geldenhuys has rightly said, “So inexplicably wonderful is the love of God that He not merely forgives the repentant sinner, but actually goes to meet him and embraces him in His love and grace.”[1] No matter how long a sinner has lived in staunch rebellion, God is always eager to welcome him or her home. He runs out to meet the one hanging their head in shame. How vital it is to remember that all we have is by sheer grace, and when yet one more prodigal son finds grace in the arms of our compassionate Father, it is only right that we should celebrate.
[1] Norval Geldenhuys, The Gospel of Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 408.
“He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:7-11, NIV)
I was reading from one of my heroes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, recently. Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who took a stand against Nazism’s cruelty during the Third Reich’s reign of terror. In one of his Christmas sermons, he reminded his listeners to contemplate the “holy mystery” of Christmas. Rather than trying to “figure out” how God could become a human or domesticating Christmas to a quaint little Nativity scene, complete with a smiling baby Jesus and cute little barn animals looking on, he said we ought to be filled with wonder during this season.
Bonhoeffer reminds us that Christmas is about God entering this world and being rejected even at the birth of Christ. Our Lord was placed in a manger — a feeding trough — not because it matched the décor of His nursery back home in Nazareth, but because no one was willing to give up their bed for Him or even His very pregnant mother.
In Matthew’s account, we read of the sinister King Herod who, upon learning of Jesus’s birth, immediately sought to destroy Him. An entire town suffered the loss of their male babies, simply because a jealous king thought he could undo the saving plan of God. Like Hitler in Bonhoeffer’s day, Herod was willing to slaughter the weak, underprivileged, and oppressed in order to assert his power over others. Sure, the biblical portrait of our Lord’s arrival puts less emphasis on having a “holly jolly Christmas,” but doesn’t Scripture give us a much more realistic portrait of our problem, and therefore what we truly need? In fact, the Bible offers a picture of hope that our world is desperate for today.
Holy Scripture tells us just what was happening that first Christmas so long ago: “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9). That is one reason our family hangs Christmas lights and lights candles every year. Those tiny lights serve as a reminder that on that cold night long ago, the true Light was coming into this world, piercing the darkness. This thought is staggering. Into a world being ripped apart by hatred, selfishness, racism, oppression, and greed, Jesus came. “And that is the wonder of all wonders,” Bonhoeffer writes, “that God loves the lowly … God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in.”[1]
The Gospel of John continues, “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him” (John 1:10-11). This is not so much an indictment on the Jewish people as it is on the entire human race. We all need to own up to our disregard of God in our lives. Even those who cherish Jesus as their precious Savior and Lord today didn’t always do so. And still today most of the world rejects Jesus for who He truly is: the Son of God and Savior of the lowly.
Despite the hostility this world had toward Him, Jesus still came. He knew the cost of sharing in our humanity and experiencing the consequences of our brokenness. He knew that loving us to the end would mean dying a sacrificial death in our place. And yet, Jesus still came. But why did He come? Why go through all the trouble of living in this distressed and hurting world?
This brings us to the great hope of the gospel. John says, “But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). God came as a little baby, but He did not stay a baby. Jesus grew to full manhood, loving both God and neighbor each step of the way. All the way, in fact, to the cross.
The holy mystery of Christmas is that despite all the reasons He could have left us to ourselves, Jesus still came, in obedience to His heavenly Father’s will. And because He was the obedient Son, we who have “believed in His name” are granted the overwhelming privilege of becoming children of God Most High. This is where the true joy and peace of Christmas is found. Stop and wonder at the mystery of it all this Advent season.
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger, trans. Jana Riess (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 23.
“‘To whom then will you liken Me that I would be his equal?’ says the Holy One” (Isaiah 40:25).
Theologian A. W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” That is a thought-provoking statement, isn’t it? There seems to be a whole world of ideas resting on Tozer’s conclusion. He went on to say, “For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” [1]
In other words, our view of God will always influence what we, His image-bearers, aspire to be — whether we are aware of it or not. How we answer the single question “What is God like?” tells us a great deal about ourselves. As many have put it, we become like what we worship.
So what is your view of God? Is He stern and demanding? Is He persistently jovial like Santa Claus? Is He loving? Is He distant? Is He everywhere but still hard to find? Is He even real? Is He disappointed all the time? Or what about this one: is He so incredibly compassionate that He is willing to suffer with you and even die for you? I wonder how you might answer any one of these questions. When you stop to think about it, to ask such questions is to put your finger on the most fundamental issue of life. What is God like? What could possibly be a more important question to consider? The purpose of the entire universe hinges on God’s existence, nature, and character.
In the Beginning
The Gospel of John begins with this astounding claim about Jesus of Nazareth: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:1-3). Then John tells us that this Word who “was God” did something we struggle to even wrap our minds around. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (v. 14). The unseen Creator (v. 3) and Son of God (v. 14) made Himself visible to the world.
At this point, our minds, hungry for answers, begin to bump up against their limits. How does the infinite, all-powerful God of perfect majesty become a helpless and tiny human baby, completely dependent on His young mother? John does not say the Word ceased being the infinite God; instead, He added humanity to His divinity. In this way, the God of the universe made Himself approachable, tangible, and truly knowable. To the average Joe, this Word-made-flesh would have looked so ordinary. He did not hover above the ground everywhere He went. His face did not emit a paranormal glow. And He certainly wasn’t ensconced in an effervescent cloud everywhere He traveled. Instead, this God-man not only appeared every bit as human as you and me, He actually was.
In verse 17, John elaborates: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The great deliverer Moses revealed certain things about who God is, through the law. The law expressed God’s goodness, justice, and holiness. It also expressed His compassion. When Moses brazenly pled with God to show him His glory, God rejected his request — at least partially (Exodus 33:18-20). Essentially, God told him, “I can’t do that, Moses. You’d die if you came into contact with the fullness of My glory.”
Yahweh, Yahweh
Therefore, God revealed Himself to Moses in a different way, by pairing His eternal Name “Yahweh”[2] (which He first revealed to Moses back in Exodus 3) with a description of His character. God took Moses up onto a mountain and “covered” him with His hand while the full radiance of His divine being passed by. The quivering Moses would only be allowed to witness the tail end of God’s glory so that he could live another day. But in that mountaintop experience God Himself proclaimed to Moses — and, by extension, to us — what He is like.
“Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).
Here, in the law (or Torah), God’s perfect character is revealed. Yahweh tells us He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, faithful, and forgiving. Yet, here is where we meet one of Scripture’s classic paradoxes. Right after saying He is both ready and eager to forgive sin, God tells us He “will by no means clear the guilty” (v. 7). How are we to make sense of this? Doesn’t a willingness to forgive imply a willingness to clear the guilty? No, and here we see the coming together of two fundamental truths about God. He is more gracious, loving, and forgiving than we could ever dare to imagine. However, He is simultaneously more just, holy, and pure than we ever thought possible. So where does this leave us? How do we solve this apparent enigma?
Scripture repeatedly affirms that we have a big problem, and that is our sin. The Bible tells us “there is no one who does not sin” (1 Kings 8:46). Although we are prone to think of ourselves as good people (Proverbs 20:6), God knows our hearts. And His verdict is clear: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). When we consider all this, there seems to be one disturbing conclusion: we are the guilty of Exodus 34:7. Therefore, we each have much at stake in understanding how God can be both forgiving and just.
Grace and Truth
Jumping back to the first chapter of John’s Gospel, let’s see that statement in verse 17 once again. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Now think about this. Grace and truth are really the twin concepts above that we are trying to reconcile. God is supremely gracious by nature and eager to forgive sin. On the other hand, if even a human judge decided to let a serial killer go free because he showed himself sufficiently sorry, you would not accept that. You would not call such a judge extraordinarily forgiving; you would call him corrupt. Why? Because to let the murderer go would be unjust.
Similarly, overlooking sin would be unjust because it would be treating the serious crime of rebellion against the King of Heaven as a minor infraction, which it is not. It would not be in keeping with the truth. John is telling us that grace and truth are fully realized, revealed, and reconciled in Jesus Christ alone. In a sense, the paradox of God’s statement about His own character in Exodus 34 has been hanging in tension all through Scripture — that is, until the arrival of Jesus.
In Jesus, God’s character is embodied and illuminated with vivid and vibrant colors in high definition. “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known” (John 1:18). In the original Greek, it actually says that Jesus has exegeted or fully explained God. That is, in Jesus we see what God is really like. That is why Jesus can later refer to Himself as “I Am” (Yahweh) (8:58) and even tell His disciples, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9).
Look at Jesus
But again, how can God both forgive sin and not overlook sin? How can grace and truth be reconciled? When Jesus first began His earthly ministry, John the Baptist heralded Him as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29). With that statement, John pointed ahead to the cross, where Jesus, like a sacrificial lamb, would lay down His life for the world. 700 years before Christ’s crucifixion, the prophet Isaiah wrote:
“But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)
We can be forgiven of our sin, but only if we believe in the One who bore our sin for us and was punished in our stead. That is why God’s character is never more vividly portrayed for all the world to see than in the cross of Jesus Christ, where both His astounding love and His perfect justice are on full display. As the psalter so beautifully writes, “Lovingkindess and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psalm 85:10). Scripture says that when we place all our trust in Christ’s sacrificial death and victorious resurrection, we are forgiven, cleared of all guilt, and found righteous in Christ (Romans 10:9-10; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 2:16).
So how do we know what God is like? Look at Jesus. More specifically, look at Jesus on the cross. There, on Calvary, with hands outstretched to embrace a world that has rejected Him, we see what God is like.
Photo credit: Rose Barraza
[1] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (Zeeland, MI: Reformed Church Publications, 2017), 1.
[2] In most English translations, the Hebrew name of God, “Yahweh,” is translated simply as “the LORD” (all caps), but a closer translation is more like “I Am” or “He Is.” In other words, Yahweh is the self-existent, eternal, and personally present Creator.
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105).
This last weekend, I stood atop Mount Defiance, a peak that overlooks the Columbia River Gorge. The view was breathtaking. Across the hills, pine forests comingled with the orange, yellow, and red of leaf-bearing trees turning their autumn hue. The broad river below shimmered under the bright sun that shone alone in the blue vault above. To the north stood the majestic peaks of Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, and Mount St. Helens. To the south, Mount Hood towered over the surrounding landscape. It was beautiful, and I thanked God for His work of art. One might wonder what could possibly move the heart to worship the Creator like such an experience outdoors. Psalm 119 provides an answer.
Psalm 119 is something of a love poem written about God’s Word, the Bible. We read statements like: “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (v. 97). It gives us a sense of just how central Bible reading must be for the man or woman who desires to walk hand-in-hand with God on the journey of life. There is a powerful lesson here for the committed follower of Jesus. Our relationship with God is not primarily strengthened through nature hikes, where the grandeur of God’s creative power is on full display, or through reading the great works of clear-thinking theologians. It’s certainly true that staggering views of creation can ignite a sense of awe and worship that is God-directed. Similarly, soul-thrilling treasures can be mined from the writings of Augustine, Edwards, Spurgeon, and many more. And yet, above and beyond these, God has made it clear that it is the Bible alone that should occupy the central place in the believer’s relationship with God.
It is through reading Scripture that true intimacy with God is forged. It is God’s Word that moves our hearts to bring bold requests to our Maker in prayer. It is through studying the Bible that we are guided, not by vague notions of what a good God might want, but by clear enunciations of His will for every believer (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8; 5:18; 1 Peter 2:25). It is the Bible — not creation — that tells us how we come into a relationship with God (2 Timothy 3:15). Every follower of Christ should reflect the attitude of the psalter in Psalm 119:35-40:
“Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.
Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!
Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.
Confirm to your servant your promise, that you may be feared.
Turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good.
Behold, I long for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life!”
From this passage, we learn that the Lord’s commandments are not burdensome; they are “good” (v. 39). In fact, they are a source of “delight” (v. 35). The implication of verses 36-38 is that when Scripture is not central to our lives and constantly redirecting our thoughts, we are prone to selfishness (v. 36), to “looking at worthless things” (v. 37), and to ignoring rather than fearing the God for whom we are made (v. 38). The words of Scripture are the words of life — apart from which we have no hope. Your Creator authored them, and they are intended for your good. As Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
Prayer: Father God, I often feel the pull of temptation to all kinds of worthless pursuits. Please redirect my thoughts and attitudes by Your mighty Word. Like the psalter, fill me with an unhindered longing for the Spirit-inspired Word of God (Psalm 119:40)!
Lamp and Light 