Monday, January 7, 2019
634 - Friendly Fire
Spirituality Column #634
January 8, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Friendly Fire
By Bob Walters
“We as sinners are
God’s enemies, but Jesus “fixes” that with His love.” – me, “Comfort and Joy”
column #632, Dec. 25, 2018
I wrote
that sentence a couple of weeks ago in the Christmas Day column and I’d imagine
most folks agreed with it. My friend Bob
Farr didn’t.
The part about
Jesus “fixing” our sin with his love was OK; all good there. It was the part about our being “God’s
enemies.” Bob wrote back almost
immediately, “Got a couple issues with
this one, brother. … ‘We as sinners are
God’s enemies.’ [?] Was the prodigal son his father’s enemy? Is the lost sheep the enemy of the shepherd?”
Point goes
to Mr. Farr, who always gets me thinking, and here’s what I thought: Bob is
exactly right and we do this to ourselves all the time. It’s a mistake to think we are God’s enemy and
a sneaky but self-evidently errant crux of most modern western Christian
culture and teaching. We think our sin
makes us God’s enemy when it was our sin that revealed God’s greatest love –
His plan for our salvation in Jesus Christ.
We imagine God looks at us the same way we look at Him and at each
other. Oh my … is that ever wrong; God’s
divine grace through Jesus is our only weapon against Satan’s rot and
humanity’s fallenness. See Isaiah 55
about “God’s thoughts and ways.”
We are more
our own enemy than we are God’s enemy. Instead
of nurturing a relationship of love and confidence, much modern Christian
culture teaches and encourages us to couch our relationship with God in
negative terms of sin, conflict, debt, shame, guilt, fear, payment, separation,
condemnation, “my life’s a mess,” and other ways that ring nearly opposite of what
the Bible actually tells us about that relationship. Most notably I’d go with “God so loved the world …” (John 3:16-17) and “… it is God who justifies … nothing can separate us from the love of
God.” (Romans 8:33-35)
True, we are
commanded to “love our enemies” so maybe we can get half a point by saying “God
loves us even if we are His enemies,” but the whole point is God’s free and unwavering
love and grace, not man’s Satan-stirred conflict and condemnation.
Still, why
is it that modern Christian doctrinal exposition is so focused on negative stimuli? Certainly, on the one hand, our sin and
fallenness mess up our relationships not only with God but pretty much everyone
and everything around us. I can’t think
of one thing my sin improves. But on the
other hand – and this may be difficult to read but I believe it’s true – guilt
facilitates earthly control of us whether it be by other people, the church, leaders,
family, co-workers, or whomever. Freedom
in Christ demands love, not guilt; and O, how our own guilt allows legalistic leverage
to be brought against us.
It’s
interesting to note that in the Bible the captives who truly fear Jesus are all
demons. I surmise that’s because they
truly understand His righteousness where most people – even many professing
Christians – hedge their bet about whether God is right all the time. We’ll insist, “A good God wouldn’t allow …” this or that, because we think we are
in a better position than God to judge and assume the posture of an enemy. That’s
a mistake. God is trying to help us, yes,
but His righteousness is unyielding.
The Prodigal Son couldn’t imagine
such love, and the lost sheep was too stupid to know it was lost. I am glad to
know Jesus is there when I make those same mistakes.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) welcomes Mr. Farr’s critiques.
They come often.
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