BP106
This blog is a collection of random thoughts about how to be close to Jesus . . .
Your faith in Jesus must go far beyond knowing the right doctrine. Knowing theology will never get you close to God.
How many people who go to seminary on fire for Jesus come out with an intellectual faith that has taken them far from knowing Jesus personally? They are commentaries without a heart. They might even speak truth from the Word, but they left love and intimacy behind, maybe in some biblical criticism class.
What are the two greatest commandments according to Jesus? Thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not steal? You shall be holy, and you shall be perfect? You must not covet, and you must not lust? As you may remember, the two greatest commandments are: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” ~ Mark 12:30-31
So, the foundation of faith is personal relationship, intimacy, trust, love. The primary goal of faith is not doing good things and avoiding bad things.
1 Corinthians 13 says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
Being a Christian is not about trying to be good. I learned that the hard way after saying early on my new faith, “Here is something I can finally be good at.” Jesus does not want us to be good at being good. He wants us to be good via another route.
Know the difference between religion and Christianity. Religion is about DO. Obey and be good so that Jesus will love you. It is all about the efforts of men and women trying to reach God. Christianity is about DONE. Jesus’ message is don’t try to be good, but come to me, know my love, surrender to me, and I will make you perfect. The natural position of fallen humanity is religion while Christianity is about grace, a concept/entity totally foreign to the fleshly mind which says, I must DO something.
Remember that there are two different kinds of knowledge: knowing about Him and knowing Him; knowing the Bible and knowing His Presence near to you; knowing correct doctrine and knowing Him as your best friend. Ideally, we will experience both aspects of the dyads because it is not about either-or but about both-and. But the latter aspect of the dyads must come first. A personal relationship with Jesus leads to right thoughts about Him; knowing His word correctly; and understanding His truth accurately.
This fallen world of pride and rebellion is opposed to the knowledge of Jesus in terms of knowing Him intimately through faith. The fallen world is perfectly fine with the knowledge of Jesus in terms of knowing about Him as a distant and detached entity. Remember the words in James 2:19: “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! (pp. 18-19).”
Yes, even demons know about God. They believe that He exists. Of course, they do not know Him personally as their Savior and as Immanuel—God with us.
Dallas Willard in the book, Living in Christ’s Presence, says that legalism “has repeatedly defeated the best intentions of the best of Christ’s followers through the ages, because it simply does not deal with the life of the individual; it deals with the behavior. . . . the person is not changed because he is pushed rather than pulled by the winsomeness of Christ.”
Tozer says, “It is simply not enough to know about God. We must know God in increasing levels of intimacy that lifts us up above all reason and into the world of adoration and praise and worship” (from Delighting in God).
The great 18th century evangelist, George Whitefield wrote, “Though I had fasted, watched and prayed, and received the sacrament so long, yet I never knew what true religion [faith] was, till God sent me that excellent treatise by the hands of my never to be forgotten friend… Some falsely placed religion in going to church, doing hurt to no one, being constant in the duties of the closet [i.e., personal devotions], and now and then reaching out their hands to give alms to their poor neighbors. Alas! thought I, if this be not religion, what is? God soon showed me… true religion was a union of the soul with God, and Christ formed within us… and from that moment… I knew that I must be a new creature.
As Colossians 1: says, “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” ~ v. 27
We must be pulled to God by His beauty and love and kindness, not pushed by shoulds. We cannot settle for simply doing right behaviors in some moralistic system but must receive Jesus as our intimate Savior and friend. Again, Christianity is all about relationship and Presence.
The danger of some evangelicalism is an emphasis on doing the right behaviors! Push people to be good and even know the right truth instead of pulling them with the fragrance of the love of Jesus. Many individuals who are turned off by the pushing of moralistic and rigid truth evangelicalism swing the pendulum to the other extreme where they throw off what feels like the heavy yoke of Jesus, a counterfeit version of the light one (Matthew 11:28ff).
Growing in the knowledge of doctrine, scripture, and truth is to help us draw closer to the beautiful Savior. Period. This growth is to make Him sweeter to us, more attractive, and to grow our trust in His perfect character that is built on love. God is love.
Loneliness, separation, isolation, hiding–these are the natural position of the universe. Even as a Christian, we will find ourselves engaged in a battle against these things. The Father delivers us from the domain of darkness (alienation, see Ephesians 2) and transfers us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. Thus begins the daily battle for intimacy. But what interferes? Temptation and sin. Shame and badness. Fear and hiding. Rebellion and running away from God.
The hard-wired instinct in us for fight or flight stems from our fall in the garden where we learned to defend ourselves and blame others, and where we mastered the ability to run from the presence of God.
The problem with legalism is that it leads to the deconstruction of faith. In the camp of religion and legalism, we are driven to be good, to obey, to not sin, and for God to prevent us from sinning. We do not begin with or focus on practicing intimacy with Jesus. Soon, we hate ourselves for not being obedient enough and fear that soon God will grow weary of our repeated sin and leave us. We also grow disillusioned with God for not showing up when we cry out to Him and make a way for us to escape.
God knows we must practice His presence before we can access His power to defeat sin. The power of God flows out of love for God, intimacy with God, friendship with God. It is never helpful to believe that we must first glorify God or conform to His character in obedience and then we will gain power. No, first we must seek Him to love Him and know Him as our closest confidant. For, He is not far from us who seek Him. The beautiful words of Isaiah 57:15 give us great hope of His presence:
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
How intimate and loving and present that the transcendent God dwells with the contrite and lowly ones of this fallen world.
Romans 5:1-2 says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
In this passage, we encounter knowing God personally as opposed to knowing about God. There is a lot of content in these verses, but the primary truth here is that Jesus’ substitutionary death which we obtain not be works (legalism) but by belief (faith) makes us perfect in the Father’s eyes so that we can thereafter no longer be enemies of God due to our sin and rebellion but be righteous ones who can draw near to Him through the open door of Jesus Christ.
Faith comes not from DO but from DONE. It is not about being good but about fixing your eyes on Jesus and experiencing Him as the treasure buried in the field. He will be priceless to you. He will be known by you as the kindest Being in the universe. He will love you without condition even when you fall for the 49th time. He will always say, “Come to me,” and will never say, “Stay away, disobedient son or daughter.”
Then, and only then, will you feel drawn toward Him instead of pushed.
Yes, faith in God is all about running toward Jesus because you find Him to be the most beautiful, satisfying, glorious Being beyond your imagination! Christianity is about being wooed by Jesus’ character and His amazing grace displayed on the cross as a symbol of death to sin and pursuit by love.
There will be undulations. There will be dark nights of the soul. You will sometimes cry out, “My God, my God, where are you? Will you ever reveal yourself to me?” But continue to seek Him first and everything else will be added to you including a desire to obey Him and glorify Him.
Finally, instead of performing for His love, practice His Presence. It is full of love, grace, truth, faithfulness, and intimacy.
His strong desire is to be with you so that He can then empower you to live in obedience to Him. First things first. Presence needs to always come first. Otherwise, we have legalism instead of love. So, pursue Him because He pursued you first. Know that your pursuit will be opposed. Plan on it so you will not be too discouraged. For that is the way of the Christian life: Light opposed by darkness.
Do remember that the promise is that nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 8:38-39). So, seek the lover of your soul and you will obtain the desire and the power to please God. The primary experience of being loved always fuels the fires of intimacy and obedience.