Monday, June 11, 2018
604 - I Didn't Ask, Part 1
Spirituality Column #604
June 12, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
I Didn’t Ask, Part 1
By Bob Walters
“Until now you have
not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will
be complete.” Jesus, John 16:24
Despite 2,000 or more years of prior instruction, promises,
and prophets, the disciples of Jesus and the Jews all around them never saw it
coming.
Humanity
didn’t see it coming. No potentate,
philosopher, or poet anywhere on Earth conjured, scripted, or imagined God’s
true and redemptive plan for fallen creation.
Nobody asked for it, nobody thought they wanted it, nobody
understood they needed it.
Yet Jesus
showed up, with divine countenance and angelic announcement. He grew into a youth
of brilliant words of faith and knowledge.
His ministry later burst forth with a shocking doctrinal rebellion presenting
all humanity with the great, joyous passion of God’s forgiving, saving,
righteous, sacrificial, and absolute love – the
revelation of freedom from sin and death – for which absolutely no one had
ever thought to ask.
Then as now
people are wired to ask for immediate physical comforts, not for an avenue upon
which to eternally glorify God. There
are a dozen or so very specific New Testament scriptures, like John 16:24
above, that appear to say, “Tell God what you want … tell Him Jesus sent you …
and it’s yours!” And oh how that screws
up the truth of God’s grace and the power of Jesus’s mission. We think God is trying to honor us. I mean, He is – He loves us – but it is a
plan far grander than our human vision allows.
It is very,
very easy for any of us to imagine the things we need, like food, water, shelter,
rest, money, family, community, and possibly power and prestige. These all amount to the stuff of physical
security. When we pray “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew
6:11) what we really are asking for is 1) to be freed of the insecurity of want
and 2) for God to help us trust Him to provide.
However: “Thy will be done” (Matt
6:10).
God will
provide to us what He wills, with a mysterious, wonderful freedom and
un-coerced love thrown in. We are wired
for worldly security we can see; Jesus came to reveal to us the world we cannot
see: the eternal loving glory of God in heaven.
Our
fallenness clouds our eyes, which I believe explains why nobody saw Jesus
coming. The hoped-for Jewish Messiah was
to come on their terms: in fearsome power and glory striking retributive wrath
against the enemies of God’s chosen Hebrew people.
Instead Jesus showed up in
powerlessness and humility – a baby – growing into a humble, loving deliverer
of a message even the most knowledgeable Jewish legal minds could not, would
not comprehend. Jesus came to tell them
their reign in the law was now at end, and that He, Jesus, brought with him the
New Covenant of grace and faith. The love of God and neighbor now overcame the
Covenant of law and obedience.
It was a blindside threat the blind
and power-hungry Pharisees could not abide.
Even today
many Christian churches preach as though the Law still abides – a practicality because
in legalism resides the organizational utility of coercion and control. As Jesus constantly told the crowds,
disciples, and Pharisees – and as Paul later wrote to the Jews, Gentiles, and
church – in Him humanity had received from God a New Covenant in faith for
which it did not ask and established a love it did not understand.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) asks for your forbearance. More next week.
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