Spirituality Column #472
December 1, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

By Bob Walters

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith … it is the gift of God.”  – Ephesians  2:8

The Bible convinces me God knew what He was doing when He created man, gave us freedom, gave us commandments, most importantly gave us Jesus Christ, and lovingly gave us grace.

God, evidently, is never surprised by how much help mankind needs.

I believe this “help” was a package deal from the very beginning; a package that in this season of Christmas gifts we are wise to consider as the most important, divine and Godly gifts, and really, the only gifts that truly matter.

We all have on our Christmas shopping lists items we know are a combination of wants and needs for those we love.  The grandchild wants a pricy electronic device, but really needs a practical pair of snow boots.  We as grandparents – y’know, humans – are stuck as to how best to show our love.

God’s instructive secret is this: love itself is the best gift because love is eternal, and God gives it continually because of His grace.

Most of humanity just wants the electronic device and really doesn’t want to hear about grace, love, snow boots or Jesus Christ.  When their feet are warm and dry in the harsh winter snow, they’ll think not about being loved but about their comfort because humanity’s sinful first cause is “me,” not God.  In our prosperous nation we often define luxuries as necessities, and we always want more.

Can there possibly be a greater luxury – or need – than God’s grace in Jesus Christ?  The common Sunday school definition of grace is “unmerited favor,” but I prefer “necessary help.”  Grace has everything to do with humility and weakness (James 4:6,  2 Corinthians 12:9) and nothing to do with merit.  It’s better not to contemplate what we do and don’t “merit” in the eyes of God.

Going all the way back, God created mankind in His own image and vowed to love us no matter what.  “What” took a severe hit early when Satan convinced Adam and Eve of their own “image-of-God” glory – so “why not” eat from God’s tree of knowledge?   Satan still revels in our guilt, in bruising God’s image, and in conflating God’s grace with our worldly appetites.

We err gravely when we evaluate God as a Santa Claus to be judged by his material largesse.  Read First John.  “God is love” doesn’t mean “Here’s a new X-Box.”

That God gave us freedom proves that our love for Him isn’t coerced.  That God gives us His grace proves He knows what we need the very most.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is going to spend December talking about true necessities.

Spirituality Column #471
November 24, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

By Bob Walters


The life-long, well-studied, devout, Bible-savvy Christian believer was earnestly making a point in a recent Bible study:

“We have to understand that everything God does is for us.”

And that’s when my blood pressure started to rise.  God’s volition – what He does and why He does it – is a mystery largely hidden from human understanding.  Close study of the Bible reveals, surely, a creative, living, righteous, relational God of tenacious love whose own glory is the defining will and purpose for everything He does.

So, am I – or you, we, whomever – the driving stimulus for all that God says, does, plans, promises and provides?  Or is there something bigger than me; a greater purpose than humanity?  I’m saying there is, and that bigger thing is the Glory of God.

Do we really need to care about God’s motivation?  Or just know He is there (Psalm 46:10), that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior (2 Peter 3:18) and the Holy Spirit is our advocate, comforter and soul-filling divine connecting point (John 14:26)?

While some of God’s existence is gloriously revealed in the heavens, the earth, scripture and in some but not all churches, ministries, faiths, human relationships and scientific discovery, I don’t see anything anywhere that suggests my existence, in God’s eyes, is “all about me.”

That’s backwards at best, and at worst suggests, perilously, that God’s creational purpose is my glory, not His.  Since we praise what is most important to us and worship what we think is most important to God, it is a short, predictable step from “all about me” to saying either “I am God” or, like the modernists, “Let’s define God in our own image.”

Where all this joins up with thankfulness in this Thanksgiving week is in discerning and understanding what we are truly thankful for.  Are we thankful for a righteous God who is truth, love, justice and mercy on His own dependable terms, even when we don’t understand?  Or are we merely thankful to God when we get good stuff, and mad at God when we get bad stuff?

Humanity, made in God’s own image, is surely important.  That God sent Jesus to save us is divine love at its most humble and profound.  That the Holy Spirit gives us instruction makes a massive point about the importance of our intellect and education.

But when I give God thanks for the saving person and grace of Jesus Christ, I’m thanking Him for His righteousness, not my importance.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves a good, lively Bible study discussion. 

Spirituality Column #470
November 17, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

By Bob Walters

“I have made you known to them …” John 17:26, Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane to His Father, God

Jesus’s life and ministry – and crucifixion and resurrection – had one goal: to tell humanity about the love and glory of God.  Funny thing is, Jesus IS the love and glory of God.  That’s His job.  And so is the Creative splendor of heaven and earth.

The Bible is clear on these points from Genesis to Revelation.  It’s tempting to dissect and separate the Father from the Son and the Son from the Holy Spirit, in our own minds, because the concurrent individual distinction and yet relational unity of the three persons of the Holy Trinity doesn’t make ready sense to the human brain.

At least not to the part that demands evidence, proof, and self-sufficiency.  That must be why God included our capacity for faith and creativity, overlaid it with freedom, and sent His son Christ Jesus into the world to show us God’s glory.  It allows us to appreciate God’s real will and purpose, grasp our real identity, share that real truth and point to the exclusive glory of God.  That’s the story Jesus came to tell.

Glory, however, is not what it seems, not to humans anyway.  The glory of God in Jesus was expressed upon the cross, in humility and sacrifice.  Humans more easily relate to God’s glory being expressed with victorious trumpets and white horses.

Come to think of it, it actually IS that, but not here, not in this fallen earthly realm.

We want the victorious white horse Jesus of Revelation 19 – right now! – not the suffering servant Jesus on the Cross in John 19, which is our truth right now.

With that in mind, pay close attention to all that is said in the name of Christianity around us.  Examine the song lyrics, the testimonies, the preaching, the prayers, the heartfelt thanksgivings, the fist-pumps and exuberant fingers gesturing toward heaven, or even the celebrity acceptance speeches at awards shows, and reflect on this:

Who, really, are we crediting with the glory?

Well, too often, it’s us.  It shouldn’t be; but mistakenly, it is.

The angels announce Christ in Luke 2 with “glory to God in the highest,” assigning ““peace and goodwill” – not glory – to man on earth.  The good thief on the cross next to Jesus, by faith got a home in heaven, not release from his earthly suffering.  In John 17:24, Jesus speaks to God of “the glory you have given me.”

Jesus, always, gets the glory, and that glorifies God.

Our job is sharing the story, not sharing the glory.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recommends thanking God but not thinking we are God.

Spirituality Column #469
November 10, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

By Bob Walters

Do you ever go looking for Jesus in the Old Testament?

It’s great fun.  He’s all over the place.  Jesus isn’t something God invented to expand scripture and have church on Sundays.  Jesus is in the original equation of God, not a “decision” God made later; not God’s “Plan B” after mankind’s sin, pride, fear, lust and so many other Satan-inspired depravities made such a mess of things.

God never lost control.

What God did was give humans freedom, not to be irresponsibly “happy” but freedom to glorify God, make God’s righteousness known, and freedom to decide to love God.  People have often used that freedom to make bad decisions.

So God never lost control; it was people who lost God.

God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit knew the plan all along.  The New Testament is where the three were presented as what early theologians figured out was the Trinity – three persons, one God, a mystery of mysteries and righteous, relational, moral, saving love.  But the Trinity started before Creation, not at the Cross.  Read Genesis 1 about the Spirit.  Read John 1 about The Word of God – Jesus.

They were God’s original, eternal, indivisible equipment.

Christ and the Spirit were revealed to man after Jesus lived, walked, taught, was betrayed, crucified and buried.  That violence is what Man in general thought of God’s ultimate truth – Jesus Christ – a truth God was telling us throughout the Old Testament, through the Hebrew nation and the prophets.  The resurrection of Jesus made known the true, eternal prospects of man; it didn’t change anything about God.

Scout for Jesus in the Old Testament.  Everywhere you see “Lord,” read it as “Jesus.”  It often fits the context of God’s salvation of man through Jesus Christ.  It’s especially fun in the very-long Psalm 119.

See Psalm 51.  David beseeches God in verse 11, “Do not cast me from your presence, or take your spirit from me.”  Who is God’s “presence”?  Jesus.  How do we know?  Because of the Spirit; Please don’t take it away.

Amos chastising Israel makes no sense unless you put Jesus in it.  “You hate the one who reproves in court; and despise him who tells the truth.”  Amos 5:10 foretells the Jewish leaders’ hatred of Jesus, as Jesus criticized the court and told the damning truth about their pharisaical pride and legalism.

Isaiah predicts Jesus vigorously.

No, God didn’t “decide” to send us a savior.  God simply let us in on His best secret: the glory and wisdom of our own decision to follow Jesus Christ.

It’s what the whole Bible is about.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves the Old Testament as a predictor of Christ, not as a rulebook for Christians.

Spirituality Column #468
November 3, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

The Faith of a Child
By Bob Walters

No, this isn’t a column about a little kid with an amazing faith story.

We all love stories of a child’s innocence and wonder and truth, so hopeful, so blessedly untainted by life’s doubts, age’s cynicism, and energy’s erosion.  We warm to the notion of purity – whether of observation, reflection or narrative – that surprises and charms us.   When demonstrated in youthful straightforwardness, it’s a tonic of guilelessness and virtue.  Kids are great.

But no, this is about us.  Adults.  And the Bible.  And Jesus Christ.  And mainly Jesus’s repeated instruction to his disciples and others, in so many words, to possess or exhibit “the faith of a child” as a requirement to come into the Kingdom of God.

This teaching on children and “little ones” appears throughout the Gospels (e.g. Matthew 18, Mark 9, Luke 9, Luke 17, etc.) and New Testament.

Taken on its surface – in a 20^th century social context of human maturity, a light understanding of Christian theology and within typical church doctrinal rigors of guilt, sin, fear, disobedience and general human fallenness that get worse as we age, and then juxtaposed with the humility, simplicity, and naiveté of the “childlike” mind, the grace of Jesus and the truth of the Gospel – the “faith of a child” teaching is charming but confusing, and even contradictory.

For example, it’s bad to be a milk-drinking spiritual infant, “not acquainted with righteousness” (Hebrews 5:13), but desirable to crave pure spiritual milk to “grow up in our salvation” (1 Peter 2:2).  We need the “milk of … God’s word,” not “solid food” (Hebrews 5:12).  Are we supposed to grow up, or not?  Are we supposed to really educate our adult selves about Christian faith, or not? Which is it: milk or meat?

In our modern Western culture, the “faith of a child” teaching seems naïve.  But to pious first century Jews and Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, it would have seemed outrageous.  And here’s why: they would have known what Jesus was really saying.

At age 13, Jewish boys went through a ceremony to become a “Bar Mitzvah,” one who is, literally, “subject to the law.”  What Jesus was saying, in quasi-parable fashion in places like Luke 9:46-48, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven,” a “child” in its contemporary social context would have meant “one not subject to the law.”

In Christ, the law is fulfilled.  “Childlike faith,” then, is pure faith focused on Jesus the Messiah Christ, meaning freedom from Jewish law.

It’s an amazing faith story, yes; but all about Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thanks Dr. George Bebawi for his Wednesday Bible studies at East 91^st Street Christian Church.  He is a deep well of faith and teaching.
PS - This column begins the 10th year of "In Spirit" in Current in Carmel.  Column #1 appeared Nov. 7, 2006.  Thanks to Steve, Brian and everyone through the years at Current. 

Spirituality Column #467
October 27, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

By Bob Walters

“… faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” – Hebrews 11:1

It is stated no more clearly than this anywhere else in the Bible: faith is about spiritual sureness, not physical proof.  Human comprehension of and confidence in the divine requires something beyond evidence and definition.

Old Testament history, laws, scripture, landmarks, prophets and the story of Israel provide a trail of earthly evidence of God’s plan for His chosen nation.  Even with so much cultural structure and religious direction, the Jews still had to take it on faith that their unique story represented God’s will and purpose.  Consider Noah, Job and Abraham and their remarkable faith in the One True God even before the Hebrew covenant, tribes, Moses, Ten Commandments and law.

The New Testament’s eternal truth of Christ is so much more unimaginable.

The Gospels attest to the arrival, purpose, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.  In Acts the disciples receive the Holy Spirit, live as Christ’s church and tell the world about Jesus.  Paul’s 13 letters describe God’s son Christ Jesus fulfilling God’s laws and prophecies while redrawing man’s expectations to include, through faith in Jesus, gracious forgiveness of sins and adoption into God’s glorious Kingdom. Hebrews – the book – proclaims Jesus as entirely sufficient for all this; in Jesus the world is entirely new.  Instead of failure and being judged in sin, humanity has hope in the redeeming, saving grace of Jesus Christ (John 3:16).  God’s promise to Israel is completed in Jesus for the entirety of humanity – humanity created in God’s image with the breath of the Spirit and the Word, Jesus, that showed up in history, time and location as the Messiah Christ.

Evidence?  How about God in the flesh, with teaching, miracles, love, wisdom, courage, humility and the ultimate purpose of saving all mankind?

“Naw, that’s just a story; I got real problems,” folks say.  Jesus just isn’t sufficient.

For a moment put aside the pervasive intellectual misdirection of the evidentiary narrative of ancient Greek philosophers and modern humanists, who endeavor to define the undefinable with arrogant insistence on the sufficiency of man’s inexplicable brain to discover truth, and the sovereignty of man’s unexplained being to assign purpose.

It’s really so simple:

Why are we here?  Because of God, for His glory.

Why do we have hope, light and truth?  Because of Jesus Christ.

Why do we know it?  Because of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is sufficient for all this not because He’s all we have, but because He’s all we need.  The point is lost when we look outside our faith.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) ignores ghosts at Halloween the way secularists ignore Christ at Christmas.

Spirituality Column #466
October 20, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

By Bob Walters

“Do you love me?” (John 21:15-17), Jesus to “Simon Son of John,” aka Peter.

Jesus, the Creator of knowledge and wisdom, isn’t on biblical record as having asked many questions.  Why would He?  There is nothing He didn’t/doesn’t know.

But the questions He does ask cut to the core.  They force each human answerer to dig deeply within his or her fallen self to discern the bedrock of what they believe about God, Christ, the Spirit, the Law, the Truth, the Scriptures and most importantly, and in the context of, the man standing in front of them – Jesus.

In John 21, the resurrected Jesus provides breakfast for the very surprised – and frightened – disciples.  Note Jesus’s sufficiency: He feeds them bread He has already prepared, and fish the disciples caught after Jesus told them where to cast their nets.

After breakfast, Jesus asks Peter: “Simon son of John, Do you love me?”

This is not a challenge but a major reset – a “do-over” – for the fiery disciple.  In two other places, Jesus calls Peter “Simon son of John.”  Upon first meeting Simon (John 1:42), Jesus declares He will call him Cephas, which translates as Peter and means “rock.”  Later, when Peter is first to identify Jesus as the Christ (Matthew 16:17) – another beginning – Jesus adds, “on this rock I will build my church,” etc.

Bible geeks dig into this – OK, I’m one of them – and note Simon was Andrew’s brother, Andrew was one of the first two disciples (the other was probably Gospel writer John) and the father of Simon (and Andrew) is identified as “John” in John 1 but as “Jonah” in Matthew 16.  The name and early discipleship are not vital.  What is vital is that the impulsive, unstable and emotional Peter – the opposite of Andrew, incidentally – was anything but a “rock” as a disciple but what Jesus knew Peter would become.

So, why is Jesus asking Peter, “Do you love me?”

Because the night Judas betrayed Jesus, a frightened Peter three times denied being a disciple of Jesus.  Now days later, facing the resurrected Jesus, Peter is again addressed as “Simon, son of John.”  Why?  Because Jesus is going back to the beginning of Peter’s discipleship and of Peter’s understanding.  Jesus, in other words, is starting over.  He forgives Peter’s betrayal and restores him with the single most important question in human existence: “Do you love me?”

Church doctrinaires argue endlessly about what is essential, proper and sufficient in Christian life.  It seems Jesus covers it all with one question:

“Do you love me?”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes many things are important, but only Jesus is sufficient.  And look what else, sinners … you can come back.