The Path to Misery

“Oh, come, O Key of David, come,
And open wide our heav’nly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

The path to misery is selfishness. We often think of selfishness as an outward thing–a selfish person treads on others, and will hurt others for personal gain. And for some that is undoubtedly true. But for an introvert like me, selfishness can be more of an internal preoccupation, a self-obsession that blocks my concern for others and chokes my ability to love my neighbor. I wonder how much of my time is spent thinking about two or three of my favorite worries, devoting mental energy to hypothetical line of reasoning that serves no end, that benefits no-one, including myself. For an introvert, selfishness can often take the form of an endless, self-concerned internal monologue.

Right now (and much of the time), that monologue concerns the future; the decisions I have to make, the circumstances that might occur, and what those mean for my future. This monologue will cause me to forget the basic fact that God is sovereign and the only real harm that can really befall me will come from my own sinning. And even that, Christ has paid for.

What the tempter affects, in me at least, during these sessions of self-concern, is impressions. I have every reason to be happy, and no reason right now to fear or doubt. But my flesh, and the kingdom of darkness, will destroy a completely beautiful thing simply by creating a worrisome feeling, which the mind then latches onto, deciding that it must pursue an endless internal line of questions, a vague and undirected attempt to resolve the worry by thinking about it. This sort of worry has no living root, it has no purpose; frankly, it is sent from hell to destroy faith and joy.

The tempter will make you feel as if something is awfully wrong, but he will not tell you what it is. Goodness is simple, it is not hard to see. Well, perhaps it is hard to see. But it is not a mystery how to be blessed, how to make things alright, how to have nothing to fear. Trust in Christ. God is present with us, and for those who trust in Christ, there is nothing to fear. The word of Christ is joy and life, it is clarity. Let us listen to him.

Why do I worry? I worry because I am selfish, because I want a plan that works out in the end, in a way that I can see, in a way that I can control. And I want to deal with things according to my own resources: my own strength, courage, and wisdom. I cannot simply trust God, behold the beauty and goodness that is before me, or even sometimes the ugliness and despair, and say to God: “you know all things, you are the one with the perfect plan, your will be done. Help me to love you and love my neighbor, and rejoice. Let me trust you.”

When life is considered in light of the Kingdom of God, the big decisions will not seem so big. The outcomes don’t really matter that much, unless we do not believe that God will turn any life lived in service to him into something beautiful in the end, into a root which may grow in his eternal kingdom, in the new heavens and the new earth.

Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers

⁹But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

¹⁰In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. ¹¹Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. ¹²He says,
“I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.” ¹³And again,
“I will put my trust in him.” And again he says,
“Here am I, and the children God has given me.”

¹⁴Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— ¹⁵and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. ¹⁶For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. ¹⁷For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. ¹⁸Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2.9-18)

whosoever shall lose his life

The greatest lesson that the world teaches us, the greatest lesson that we have to learn from all worldly pursuits, is that we may save our life only to lose it. This is a worldly lesson, built upon a worldly understanding of life as what can be accomplished in a lifetime, what we can attain, the “mark” we can leave on the world, whatever that means. This viewpoint reveals itself as despair when we realize that, from the worldly perspective, all must perish in the end. Really we can’t leave a mark. If we really and truly learn this lesson, then we are “not far from the kingdom of God…”; that is, we are ready for Christ, for his rule, for his way of living. The man in the gospels who Jesus told this to was a person who had realized that love of God and love of neighbor were more important than all religious ritual (cf. Mark 12. 34).

And so Christ comes along and solves the puzzle, by telling us two facts. First, he tells us that we actually do leave a mark. But it isn’t the mark we were trying to leave. Every deed, every word, every thought and action will be remembered. Really this could not be otherwise; God does not forget. And because of this, and by his grace in other ways, we come to see that how we have been living–our efforts to have led the good life, to have left our mark, to have made the most of things, etc–are not necessarily pleasing to God, the good judge of all things.

The mark is not what we thought it was; we didn’t really know the things that mattered. In the things we had pursued, we forgot about loving our neighbor. And we hadn’t honored God in what we did, but rather sought to glorify ourselves. This can be horrifying, and is horrifying, but he gives us the second fact, which is the comfort: whosoever shall lose his life shall save it. We didn’t really know what life was, you see. We strove after the sort of life that perishes, but he gives us his life, the eternal life, the sort of life that will not perish. He gives us this by giving us himself. But we had to give up the life we thought we had, in order to gain it.

Many people think that if they come to Jesus, if they become Christians, that they are giving up something that they could never give up, and thus that it’s not worth it to pursue God. And indeed, much of religion conveys this message, making it seem as if we have to choose between God and pleasure, between God and joy. But it is not so. This is not the offer. Jesus’ words confirming this are as follows:

“I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. ²⁹And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19.28-29)

The parallel in Mark has a valuable shift of emphasis that helps us understand the meaning:

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.” (Mark 10. 29-31)

Everything in this world that is of value that we give up will be replaced. In fact, “replaced” is not the right word. Mark makes it clear that the we get the same things back, including things that are irreplaceable (for example, mothers). The point is, everything that really has eternal value in the present age will be given to us now according to God’s good love for us, and will survive into eternity. It’s just, at this point in time, our hearts have very mixed up priorities, so that the call to follow Jesus will seem like a loss. It seems like many good things will have to be absolutely abandoned. What Jesus is telling us here is that this is not actually so.

The renewal of all things will feature abundantly more of what we had clung to, and if we hope for the redemption of these things that we cling to, we must abandon them as our idols in order to follow the one and only God. So we do have to abandon many things in the way that we had considered them, and this will be difficult. We ought never trivialize this. And we ought never pretend that the things we have selfishly pursued are actually God’s blessing. For these things do perish, and we along with them, if we make them our gods. Jesus tells us above that the good in the present age comes “with…persecutions”–we must take this to heart and realize that even the joys of this age come with difficulty and strife. But strife which we can endure because we know the promises of our great king, that the goodness he is building on earth now will survive and blossom in the new heavens and the new earth.

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

¹ Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. ² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.

³ A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
⁵ And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

⁶A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
⁷The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

⁹Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Behold your God!”
¹⁰ Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
¹¹ He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.

¹² Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?
¹³ Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,
or what man shows him his counsel?
¹⁴Whom did he consult,
and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding?
¹⁵Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
¹⁶Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,
nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
¹⁷ All the nations are as nothing before him,
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

¹⁸ To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with him?
¹⁹ An idol! A craftsman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and casts for it silver chains.
²⁰ He who is too impoverished for an offering
chooses wood that will not rot;
he seeks out a skillful craftsman
to set up an idol that will not move.

²¹ Do you not know? Do you not hear?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
²²It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
²³ who brings princes to nothing,
and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

²⁴Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

²⁵ To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
²⁶Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name,
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not one is missing.

²⁷Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
²⁸Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
²⁹He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
³⁰Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
³¹but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah ch. 40)

…and he will guide them to springs of living water

⁹After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, ¹⁰and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” ¹¹And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

¹³Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” ¹⁴I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
¹⁵“Therefore they are before the throne of God,
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
¹⁶ They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
the sun shall not strike them,
nor any scorching heat.
¹⁷For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7.9-17)

moralistic idolatry

You will sometimes hear a preacher say, “now, created things are not bad, mind you, but we can’t let them get in the way of our worship of God!” This is a true point in its own right, but I also think it is a severe understatement, and contains a danger in that understatement. I would venture to say that the proper counterpoint to this statement is the following, which may itself be a bit overstated: without creation, we cannot worship God at all. Angels, perhaps, can praise God as pure spirits, but that is not what we are. And that is not even my point, really–angels themselves are created. They cannot worship God, either, without reference to the created modes of interaction that God has ordained for them (which remain a mystery to us). But my point is that, without creation, we are nothing, and hence worship is nothing. God exists apart from creation, but he is the only being with this property. For all created beings, their interaction with God is mediated through creation.

Further, as long as we view creation in competition with our worship of God, we will let the one get in the way of the other. To do so itself breeds idolatry, because it paints a picture of a moralistic and gnostic god who is opposed to the goodness we see around us. There is no essential conflict between created good and the worship of God. The conflict is contingent. What is it contingent on? It is contingent on our rebellious hearts.

Thus when a moralist rails against some created good, what we are really seeing is the idolatry of his own heart: the secret desire he has to abuse creation has been unconsciously wed, in his mind, to the creation itself. His own idolatrous impulses have become, in his mind, intrinsic to the object of his potential false worship. This is one of the dangers of “the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.”

The beauty of the gospel is that it sets us free from this. We are no longer pitted in an impossible battle against the created things we have abused, and the hold they have on us. Rather, we hold tight to Jesus Christ in faith, and he will set the rest aright.

He will swallow up death forever

I’ll never forget the first time I heard this passage read aloud, and I heard it read again today in church:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the LORD; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25.6-9)

Amen.

The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians (Part 12 of 155)

Ephesians 1.14: …this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.
Our previous verse was about the Holy Spirit, who comes to dwell in us when we believe in Jesus. One thing I didn’t talk about was the use of the word “seal,” which seems to become important here. In this whole sentence (Ephesians 1.13-14), the Holy Spirit is being thought of as a gift who also proves to us the grace and promises of God. To be sealed with something is to be officially marked; here Paul is telling us that to have the Holy Spirit dwell in us is to be marked as a member of God’s people.

He calls it a “pledge of our inheritance toward redemption”; so here we are seeing very concretely the present and future aspects of God’s promises towards us. Here I think “pledge” is to be thought of as being a foretaste, a little (but genuine) bit what is to come, which also gives us assurance and knowledge of the reality that is promised. We experience the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, his ability to renew our hearts and give us hope in Christ, and we then trust that God will see us through to the finish, to the new heavens and the new earth.

This raises an issue for me that I’m sure I’m not alone in. Oftentimes Christians wonder: do I really have the Holy Spirit in me? I don’t feel him. While it’s certainly true that the Holy Spirit worked great wonders in the early Church (prophesies, tongues, and miracles), and still works wonders today, we should never associate his activity solely with a certain sort of feeling, or otherwise tangible experience or emotional state. This sells him way short–remember that this is God we are talking about. Drugs can give us feelings; the Holy Spirit does things on a much more subtle and deep level. This doesn’t mean that he won’t influence our emotions–even powerfully so, at times. But he cannot be marked out by an emotion, and the lack of emotions does not signal that he is not present or that he has left.

I am speaking for myself here. I know there are people for whom the presence of God is so tangible that it fills them with great joy and marks their character constantly with the peace and presence of Christ. I am not denying this reality, and I even think I have met some such people (and, to be honest, I envy them). I only mean to say that this is not the experience of us all, and it does not mean that we are without God. We can learn a lot from such people; one thing we should not learn is the despairing falsehood that we have to have an experience like theirs in order to be faithful to God.

The Holy Spirit may not always be felt but he is always near. He whispers the truth to our consciences and he gives us courage and faith. This is “to the praise of God’s glory.” This may also be puzzling, because often it seems that God is not so glorified in this world. But, I believe that both of these issues–the apparent absence of God in our experience and in the world as a whole–have a common root. What I’d like to suggest is that God is accomplishing a work on such a grand scale, and through such close means, that we almost miss it. I hope I can get across what I mean by this. We often hope and pray that God will bring an end to visible evils such as disease and war; and we should continue to pray such things, because it does, indeed, make all the difference in the world (believe it or not). But the main work God is accomplishing is the collective redemption of individual human hearts.

We have to see his grand scale action–his entire plan, individual and collective–from the proper perspective, knowing that what needs to happen for the ourselves to be truly healed and for the world to truly be healed is, really, beyond our grasp. The Holy Spirit is drawing a people to himself, enabling them to love him, and through him love their neighbors. This is the Kingdom of God, being brought to earth in history, and it does not always look like we expect. We want, for instance, for him to destroy every temptation and inclination to sin in our hearts, but he does not. We still have many failures. Likewise, we want him to come and visibly crush the oppressor now, to put an end to all the visible evil we see. But:

and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. (Isaiah 11.4)

It is the word of Christ, and not his sword, that will put an end to wickedness, at least in this age.

Next time, we will pause to reflect a bit on what we have read so far; it seems a good place to do so.

The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians (Part 11 of 155)

Ephesians 1.13: In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;…

The previous verse was about those who first hoped in Christ, how their purpose was to live to praise his glory. It is not clear exactly who these people are, but I think we can basically identify them with the first people who preached Christ. Paul considers himself a member of such a group, and we see that he now moves to address his audience, the Ephesians, who are among those who came to believe in Jesus through the praise and preaching of the original believers.

This verse describes a remarkable process that takes place in a person when they come to believe. Let us consider the order of events. One hears “the word of truth.” This is a preaching of the reality of who God is and what he has done in Christ. It is the gospel of our salvation, the good news of how a human being, and humanity, is redeemed. As we have seen already, it is a different story from the other stories that we hear so often about what matters in life, about what we really need, and about what salvation is, and how one attains it. It is a story founded on the grace of God.

It is the story of how we have nothing to offer God, but God in his love has everything to offer us, how this God became a man and took up into himself everything about what that means. This man, Jesus, experienced our joys, but also our sorrows; this man bore all of our temptations, our sins, our sufferings. This man died, and this man rose again, and has made a way for us to be united to God.

This strange story is the truth about our world, about our lives. When a person comes to believe it, and believe in Him who the story is about, he or she is “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is God himself, the love of the Father for the Son, and the Son for the Father. When we believe in Jesus, his spirit dwells in us like we are a temple of God, because that is what we are. In the later Old Testament times, the most intimate contact that God had with humanity was through his temple, where his presence would dwell in a special way. Even within the temple, there were different levels of God’s presence: there were the outer courts, the sanctuary, the Holy place, and the Most Holy place, where the Ark of the Covenant was placed. There was a veil covering this, and only once a year could the high priest enter in.

But now the veil of the temple has been torn in two because of the work of Jesus Christ, our great high priest:

⁵⁰And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.  ⁵¹At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. (Matthew 27.50-51)

The most Holy Place is no longer in the temple but is now in a person. The high priest now no longer enters the temple once a year, but enters our hearts once and for all when we trust in him. Think about all that it means for a place to be Holy, a place to be set apart for God to dwell in, to be the center of his activity and the foundation of his presence in the world, the center from which his love radiates to fill all of creation. And then realize that this is what is meant for our hearts when we believe in Jesus. God lives in us, individually and communally. Humanity is the most appropriate dwelling place for God in all of creation, it is the center of his activity. The living, active, creative love of God the Father is remaking our hearts in the image of his Son.

This does not mean that we are perfect now but rather that we are now the center in which his work is taking place. This is an awesome and scary responsibility! But it is God’s doing and his grace is with us in the process. The Holy Spirit lives in us, reveals to us our sin, and teaches us the truth both about what a human being should be and about what God is like–teaches us how to love our neighbor and how to worship. Our characters and lives are being shaped by Christ to reflect Christ, and this is how God is redeeming the world, bringing his kingdom, his rule on all the earth.

Next verse (I will stop saying “tomorrow” since I may not keep up such a pace! I will try, however):

1.14: …this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians (Part 10 of 155)

Ephesians 1.12: …so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.

Yesterday’s verse was about our inheritance in Christ, how we have been destined for the kingdom of God. I interpreted this as a future claim, though some comments have caused me to begin to doubt this. Perhaps our inheritance is also to be considered as something already received. In any case, this verse tells us one of the purposes of this inheritance: that those who were the first to set their hope on Christ might live for the praise of his glory.

Looking ahead to the next verse, there is a shift in subject (Paul says “you also…”), which seems to indicate that the “we” in this verse is referring to some special subset of people. I think that Paul is distinguishing between the first disciples of Christ (apostles and others), who preached the good news and established churches, and those who have come to believe through them–the “we” is “the first to set our hope on Christ.”  I do not see, however, this distinguishing as creating any sort lack in the blessings that have been promised to the latter. Perhaps only that there is a special joy for those who first came to know the mystery of God’s plan, as we have talked about before.

For such people, then, the initial joy of discovering God’s wonderful plan in Christ–the forgiveness of sins, the new life, and the redemption of the world–grows into the desire to live in order to proclaim, in word and deed, the wonderful glory of God in this plan, and so participate in the plan.

But is this something that was only meant for the first believers? I don’t think so. Rather, I think we see here what is a repeating, blossoming process in Christianity, where people hear the good news of God’s Son from others, and then come to believe themselves, then begin to be restored, and eventually become those who bring the good news to others, through the praise of God’s glory that comes from the hope they have that grew out of their faith. And so the mustard seed of the gospel grows in the world.

How do we live to praise the glory of God? Obviously this is a big question. Ideally, we do so in every aspect of our lives. But I think it is important not to make this artificial, as I have done so many times in my attempts to be holy. I heard a preacher say once something to the effect of “even when I drink orange juice, I should do so to the glory of God.” I feel like, while it is possible to drink orange juice to the glory of God, if one tries to drink orange juice to the glory of God, he is inevitably going to fail. Rather, I tend to think that this should be spontaneous, and flow from a genuine awareness and appreciation of God in all things, including simple pleasures like orange juice.

Though I am conflicted now, because there is something to be said of doing something that seems artificial until it becomes natural. I may pray a prayer of thanks for my food each meal, which I don’t really believe in my heart comes from the Almighty, but if I keep doing this, and have real faith in general as I do it, eventually God will help me to pray that prayer sincerely. I have come to think, recently, that I can sometimes turn sincerity itself into an idol, obsessing over only doing something if I mean it; really this should not be the criterion for what I do or don’t do.

Tomorrow’s verse:

1.13: In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.