BP 153
The Bible tells us that Christians are in the world but not of the world. We have talked about that a bit in several recent posts discussing C. S. Lewis’ idea that believers in Jesus are spiritual amphibians. This world is not our home, but we are still living in it—for now. Meanwhile, we long every day for the eternal home we will attain after we check out of our current bodies.
Does that mean we hate the worldly culture we are living in? Not necessarily, unless our culture embraces inky darkness like the murder of babies and the vivisection of the bodies of human adolescents as they grope around for their true gender identity.
Sometimes, then, we may hate the culture we are living in. Of course, followers of Jesus are not here in this temporal world to hate other people. We are born again by the Spirit to love God and others as we love ourselves. However, we are not here to love the culture. We might enjoy some of what our culture has to offer, but we are not sold out to it. Ultimately, we are not citizens of this world.
Philippians 3:17 ff makes this truth clear: “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”
As born-again believers who in status are already seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6), we are not here to be seduced by the opinions of this fallen world but to listen to and love God’s perfect wisdom. The culture we live in is increasingly rejecting God’s objective truth and instead settling for relative truthiness, personal opinions, and subjective feelings birthed in the human heart that, divorced from God, is dark and deceitful.
Once again, however, Jesus calls us to love our neighbor and, like Him, to be the friend of sinners.
Let’s read a few comments by some who are of this world and some who are simply in the world but not of it.
“Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries [devotees of Jesus?] does not mean I’ve discarded a belief in right and wrong.”
‘But the Almighty determines what is right!’
“Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality — which answers only to my heart — is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.” ― Brandon Sanderson
“God doesn’t save us to perpetuate a particular Christian sub-culture. He saves us to advance a supernatural kingdom that is not of this world” ~ Michael S. Heiser
“The culture is your friend in the same way that a brown bear is your buddy.” ~ L. Paige Patterson
‘It’s not prideful to believe what the Bible teaches; it’s humble because we recognize that God knows better than do we or the confused voices of our culture.” ~ Randy Alcorn
“I’m not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.” ~ C. JoyBell C.
When God is pushed out of a culture—not in a year or a decade, but slowly, inexorably, maybe over a fifty-year period—a dark vacuum is created. Someone must fill this emptiness. Or, as is often mentioned here at DTFL, something will fill that vacuum since Jesus alone brings the heavenly pursuit of someone as seen in the two Great Commandments, viz., to love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
Only by the power of Jesus are we capable of loving Him, others, and ourselves as opposed to worshipping temporal idols of pleasure, a worship that has more to do with lust than love.
A fundamental universal truth is that when the Gospel is shunned in a culture, God’s good news will be replaced by a new gospel.
Actually, I don’t think either of those words is correct—“new” or “gospel.” The word “gospel” literally means “good news.” Once God is rejected, there is no good news left. Only bad news. There will not be another Gos-pel, only a Dark-spell. Also, the darkness that comes when God is exchanged for idols is as old as the Garden of Eden after the Fall, so the word “new” is also incorrect. Living in darkness is actually the “normal” and “natural” experience for all of us in this world. Loving Jesus is the “unnatural” condition.
There is so much that could be said here about the impact of Jesus and His good news (the gospel) as opposed to the Dark-spell, but today I am going to focus primarily on one aspect, namely, the removal of sin. Jesus came to forgive our sin, to remove our shame, to invite us to approach His throne for mercy and grace, to take our badness on Himself and give us His righteousness. Jesus’ death meant that our transgressions could be washed away, even forgotten by God.
Forgotten.
Cleansed.
Impurity exchanged for holiness; evil for righteousness; hiding for total transparency.
No wonder we call Jesus’ message good news! The removal of our sin through His sacrificial death is amazing! Awesome! If we turn away from our sin and come to Him in repentance, He will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. No more guilt, shame, badness, hiding of our sin. We are free from all condemnation! Joy takes the place of gloom and shame.
At the core of the Gospel is this truth: Jesus tells us to identify our sins, own them, admit them through confession to Him (and through confession to one another), and then experience His forgiveness followed by the injection of His goodness into our hearts (2 Corinthians 5:21). He instructs us to see the log in our own eye so that we will come to Him in repentance.
“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven . . . why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye” ~ Luke 6:42ff.
Jesus clearly encourages us not to blame others, not to ignore our sin and focus on the sins of others, not to project our badness onto others and then hate them instead of hating our sin. He does not wish us to reject His grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Why not? Because then we’re left without cleansing. We still carry the crushing weight of our guilt and shame. We must then manufacture a way to get rid of our sins outside of God’s amazing Gospel. We must create our own counterfeit gospel.
What is the gospel our current culture is constructing now that they have rejected God? Okay, not a gospel but a Dark-spell. Without the good news of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins, our culture must come up with plan B to get rid of sin.
As DTFL has mentioned in other posts, among the remaining options to deal with sin and shame there is only one in the end that we can practice: blaming others. We see the speck that is in our brother’s or sister’s eye but ignore the log in our own eye, and we take the log that is in our eye and see it in someone else’s eye. We will also defend or minimize our sin and instead shoot the messenger who sheds light on our badness.
Jesus calls us to look inside first, to see our log of sin. He calls us to take responsibility for our sin because only then will we realize our need for help and run to Him for His unconditional love and purifying grace that sets us free to dance for joy because the 100-pound backpack of badness has miraculously been removed from us.
As opposed to Jesus, the culture demands that we look outside first and see the problem in those around us instead of in our own hearts. Once again, the Dark-spell denies personal sin. It does not hate sin and admit ‘badness’ but rather hates God and other humans who shed light on how men and women fall short of the glory of God. God must be hated, rejected, and killed because He (lovingly) exposes badness in the human heart. Humans who shine like stars in the cosmos must also be hated for their illuminating light instead of focusing inside on one’s own sin.
Our current world increasingly is a world not of personal responsibility but of victimization and blaming others. At least it increasingly seems that certain individuals are the victims while others are the victimizers. I certainly admit that we need to protect victims and hold bullies and criminals responsible for how they harm others. 100%. I’m just saying that the attitude of the culture is devolving toward blaming others (and toward hating those who speak God’s truth about Jesus and His good news even when done in a kind manner) instead of looking at the log in our own eye.
Someone recently confessed to me that in this culture of blame and projected badness and hating the one who exposes sin instead of hating one’s own sin, he feels very anxious. He admitted that he is always looking over his shoulder because he fears that he will be blamed for something by the culture around him. His fear includes road rage, the venting of one’s own badness onto someone else. Yes, road rage is often a clear example of blaming someone else instead of seeing the log in one’s own eye.
So, be aware of the Gospel and the Dark-spell. Jesus’ good news holds you personally accountable and tells you not to judge others. The dark news holds others accountable for one’s own sin.
Stigma has become the word of the day. Yes, certainly stigmatization occurs in this world, but often the word stigma is used as a way to blame others instead of taking responsibility for one’s own unhealthy choices. The culture asks, What are your unhealthy choices and personal struggles? Then it answers, None of them are your fault. You are acting the way you are because someone else is mistreating you.
In a world where God has been rejected, there is no more sin or badness. Sin is the fault of society, and maybe especially Christians and a holy God or anyone who asks you to look inside instead of outside.
Jesus calls us all to identify and confess our sin. No one is exempt from this truth. No one is better than his brother or sister. Jesus does not want any of us to blame others and hide our sin. Never. He commands us to own and ask forgiveness for our sins. The culture increasingly tells us not to embrace moral culpability but to use others as receptacles in which to pour our sin and to use as objects of blame.
This Dark-spell is the very opposite of the Gospel. This bad news is diametrically opposed to God’s truth.
I rarely if ever wade into the world of politics in this blog. Today is no different. What I am addressing here is not human politics but God’s truth versus man’s truth. The ultimate aim of today’s post is to fall on my knees and give thanks to God the Father for sending His own Son to all of us men and women who have been held captive by sin, guilt, shame, and condemnation but now have the opportunity to be set free by His forgiveness and credited righteousness.
God tells us in Romans 8:1ff that “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Yes, I thank Jesus for the Gospel, for the Good News, for the truth that “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus . . .” ~ Ephesians 2:4ff.
Know that those who do not embrace the mercy and love of God in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins must necessarily attempt to deal with their badness or sin by framing themselves as the victim who is being hated by others. (Yes, there are those who claim to believe in God but then turn around and hate sinners instead of being their friend. These individuals might very well be modern day Pharisees. Jesus reserved His deepest anger for these hypocrites.) Even God is victimizing them by telling them that they are sinners (“bad people”) who need to run to Him for forgiveness.
How dare He tell us what is right and wrong and accuse us of being sinners!
My point is not that victimization and stigmatization never occur in this world, but that our culture is increasingly using these two constructs as a global smoke screen to distract from their sin and instead indict the holy God for being judgmental and hateful. Instead of looking inside to identify their sin and then bring their shame to Jesus, the citizens of this culture are looking outside and blaming others a la the scapegoat we discussed in last week’s post.
In summary, open your eyes to witness the massive paradigm shift in the American culture. Instead of the Gospel being the truth that permeated our culture, now it is the Dark-spell that is becoming dominant by the minute. This bad news births and incubates humanism, modernism, relativity, and even Satanism and other religions that oppose the Good News of God’s love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness, exchanging it for a far inferior message that does damage instead of promoting healing.
So, I invite you not to absorb the cultural Dark-spell into your soul. Turn instead to the One who came to set you free from the law of sin and death so that you might live for Him, leaning for dear life on His righteousness that He freely gives.
How amazing is the peace that comes from being forgiven and cleansed! No blame, projection, hate, or judgment of others is needed where our badness is forgiven and forgotten and replaced with goodness and joy. All that is left is the freedom to love everyone around us—even our enemies.
Jesus brings good news. How can we reject it? Who would not want to exchange the heaviness of badness and shame for the lightness of peace and unconditional love?
“The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” ~ 1 Timothy 1:5
“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. 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 5:17ff
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” 1 John 1:9-10