All We Need Is Love

I was once convinced of the veracity of the statement “rules without relationship breeds rebellion.” I understood that love was the missing ingredient, but I didn't realize that the need for rules would be fulfilled if love was present.

I ought to have realized this, as I would often write of how Jesus fulfilled the law. I also knew unequivocally that the two greatest commandments that fulfill all the law are to love God and love people. However, my knowledge of this was trapped in my mind and had not traversed to my heart.

My knowing was not really knowing at all. I could write all about it, but I didn't really get it. I've come to understand that I have not abandoned my relationship with the rules. My thought was that if we introduce love, then love will compel people to obey the rules.

But when a husband loves his wife, he knows what things may bring her pain, disappointment, or fear. He will not do these things, not because she has given him a rule book to follow, but because he loves her and cares about her heart. This is love. Love does not need rules, but if there were some, it would fulfill them just by maintaining the way of love. A husband who loves his wife does not need to be told to be faithful to her, he wouldn't think of being otherwise.

Just the same, love is great enough to cover a multitude of sins. If a wife loves her husband, she will love even when his love grows cold or his feet stumble into a path that does not protect her heart. Love does not keep a record of wrongs. It is always faithful and true. It always hopes and perseveres.

Many look at I Corinthians 13, famously known as the Love Chapter, as the criteria one must follow to love. Instead, it is the description of what love looks like. There in lies a significant difference. The former way of thinking lends one to trying to preform the way of love by following the rules, the latter is realizing that love is present or absent in your heart. When you see what love looks like, you can realize if you know this kind of love or not. The passage is not the rules of love to follow if love is missing, it is the fruit of love that can only come from tangible contact with God's love.

The more one has experienced His love the more their love can look like His. This is why a strand of three chords is not easily broken.

We will wear ourselves out trying to follow rules of love. It cannot be done. Such a life is inauthentic. It is a life of performance, an actor upon a stage. It is an exhausting show to maintain no matter how sincere one is. When we do what is right so the other person does not leave, or so that they do what we want in return, we do not have love. When we withhold love when they have hurt us, we do not have love.

From a young age we begin relationship with rules even when those rules were given to us by those who love us, we learn following the rules is the good life, and breaking them will hurt. We were not designed to be captives. We are created to have free dominion. The only way freedom can reign is if our hearts are healed and we live out of healthy hearts that are not afraid to love and do not get knotted up when someone breaks the rules.

Jesus did not lecture the woman caught in adultery. He protected her from the punishment of breaking the rules and sent her on her way, simply stating, “go and sin no more.” She did not need external punishment, but internal experience with love. Experiencing the love of Jesus protecting her from those who would condemn her was enough to free her from continuing sin.

The more I see what love is all about, the more I see how far away I am from that standard. At the same time, I also see how getting there is about resting, not trying. The more I rest in the Father's love, the more His love will flow from my heart.  

The Nature of Belief

There are a few different terms used in the New Testament to referrer to a follower of Jesus. One term was “Christian”, which literally means “little Christ” this was used derogatorily, but caught on as a positive label. “Followers of the Way” was another label used, this time by the followers themselves.


The term “believer” was used also at times, and is commonly used today interchangeably with the term “Christian.”


However, I am finding that the using the language of “belief” and “believer” has created a misconception regarding our relationship to God.


Consequently, I looked up the word in the Greek to further research the original meaning behind the term. The Greek word translated as “belief”, “believe”, or “believers” repeatedly throughout the Gospels and Acts is “ pisteuo” which is defined in detail below.

BELIEF, BELIEVE, BELIEVERS

A. Verbs.

1. pisteuo (pisteu/w, NT:4100), "to believe," also "to be persuaded of," and hence, "to place confidence in, to trust," signifies, in this sense of the word, reliance upon, not mere credence. It is most frequent in the writings of the apostle John, especially the Gospel. He does not use the noun (see below). For the Lord's first use of the verb, see 1:50. Of the writers of the Gospels, Matthew uses the verb ten times, Mark ten, Luke nine, John ninety-nine. In Acts 5:14 the present participle of the verb is translated "believers. See COMMIT, INTRUST, TRUST.
(from Vine's Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, Copyright © 1985, Thomas Nelson Publishers.)

John 1:50-51
Jesus answered and said to him, "Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these."
NASU

Therefore, the word is not just intellectual assent, but confidence, trust, reliance upon, not mere credence. The same Greek word is also translated as commit, intrust, and trust. Therefore, a believer is not one who accepts certain truth claims as fact in his head, but is one who trusts, commits, has confidence in, relies upon, Christ. It is not a passive word, but an active word.

God isn’t looking for people to believe He is real and that His word is true. He is looking for people who rely on Him because He is reliable. For people who have confidence in Him, because He is worth their commitment. For people who trust in Him, because He is worthy to be trusted. Moreover, all of these things are good for the person.

Man is made to have this symbiotic relationship with their God. We are made to live, and move, and have our being in Him. That is where we thrive and experience the fullness of the good reality, the Truth that is not an informational fact of knowledge, but a Person that can be known intimately.

It can be truly stated that believing is seeing, because believing is not mere intellectual assent, it is to be fully invested experientially. Moreover, this is why we find when we seek. Seeking isn’t an intellectual exercise, but an act of experience. We seek with our being to connect with God. It does something in us to seek to find God, for we are positioned to find when we are seeking.

This is why I agree with those who say they need an encounter to believe. Or when it is said that a believer who makes a claim of hearing God speaking, or a claim of seeing miracles, ought to be able to demonstrate this reality and not just tell of a past story when it supposedly happened. I have absolutely no contention with this request. Not every Christian would make the claims I am making that God can personally talk to us, and that we can say what He is saying, and that we can do miracles like Jesus did. Many Christians would want to see this evidenced as well.

There are people on the earth today that are moving in extraordinary revelation and extraordinary healing power. This ability is not relegated to a few, but so many Christians do not know who they are. We have identity crisis, and we do not live like we have God living through us because our idea of that is something different than the fullness of what being in Christ really means. We trust in what we see with our physical eyes, instead of living out of our new identity. We really, myself included, are not much different sometimes than those who do not believe in God at all, because we make claims we do not live because our belief is head deep instead of heart deep.

Some would object instantly and think I am making some kind of attack against the authenticity of their faith in Christ. I assure you I am not. I am speaking of myself as much as of any one else in Christ. Jesus often told the disciples they had little faith, and yet they lived right there with Him. They saw the miracles, but their faith continued to rest in their natural reality rather than the supernatural reality.

They shook with fear as the storm raged in the boat while Jesus slept. They woke him, begging Him to do something. He stands and speaks to the storm to still and it obeys Him. Where was their belief? It was in the natural circumstance of a storm. Where was Jesus’ belief? It was resting soundly in the reality of God where there are no storms raging. He didn’t need to stop the storm to rest; He calmed the storm for the disciples. He was already resting confidently secure in a heavenly reality. He made that reality manifest for the disciples to see it once again in their natural circumstances.

Jesus said that we could bring that Kingdom reality (the supernatural heavenly reality) to the earth. The Kingdom is not a matter of word, but rather a demonstration of the power of God. Jesus demonstrated that power by calming the storm. There really isn’t any reason for people to believe at this high level of experiential belief when there is no demonstration of His Kingdom. Believing is seeing, because when you experience it, you will see.

I do not expect sight before experience. I write to help clear out some of the misconceptions out there about God’s Kingdom. I do not expect my words to persuade the sort of belief of which I speak. I hope that they can come to remembrance when the time comes that experience occurs to help aid in the transition that may follow once someone has seen the demonstration of God’s Kingdom.

Thus, I do not aim to pressure anyone to intellectual assent or experiential belief. I am confident that His words are true that any who seek after the truth will find it. From what I observe atheists are looking for truth, real truth, something solid and sure and right. I applaud that resolute determination not to be swayed by anything less.

Righteousness Reflected

Sometimes the right thing at the wrong time can be the wrong thing. Jesus said He only did what He saw His Father doing and only said what He heard His Father saying. This means He was walking in a present reality of His Father’s will. He wasn’t doing what His Father was doing yesterday, but what He is doing today. God is righteous and when we are in Him, we are made righteous and we can share in a righteous nature by which we are enabled to live righteously.


The normal tendency is to divorce right living from righteous being. We then structure rules to follow to make our own self-righteousness. Sometimes those rules are things He has told us in a moment that we take as a law. He leads us to hug a homeless person and we turn it into a rule that we have to hug every homeless person and make everyone else do it too. It’s easier for us, we think, to find a structure of rules to obey then to have relationship with the one who is righteous. He does the work for us, and yet we try to keep doing the work on our own strength for our own merit. He says give me your burden and I will exchange it for something lighter, for something better. And yet we hold on to our burdens and struggle under the weight of things He is ready and willing to free us from.


What if when we get married our spouse gives us a list of things to do that they believe will be good for the marriage. What if we then work at the list and try to fulfill it day after day? Maybe that list even has really good things like spending time together or loving each other. But all that is being done is to honor the list to keep the law. All becomes rigorous duty instead of the actions of love. Would it not be better, for the husband and wife to serve each other out of a relationship of love instead of duty? It is the same way with God; Christ frees us from the law of obligations and duties. He came to open the door so that we don’t need external guidance from a set of laws.


When I profess that Christ frees us from the law, I am not saying that we are given license to sin, far from it. I am saying that we are freed from needing the law to keep us on the right path. We have something better; the door to the Father has been opened to us without our earning entry. The price was paid by Jesus and we can enter into full righteousness through Jesus. Also the Holy Spirit guides us in all truth. We learn to listen to the voice of God and allow Him to direct our path. It’s not a control thing, it’s a relationship thing. When you are in relationship with the Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Almighty God, the Perfect Father, the Loving Friend, you soak in His love and righteousness and from that place you desire to live as He and reflect Him. He doesn’t hold the puppet strings and make us conform to Him, but the more we get to know Him the greater our desire to shine Him in all we do.


When we accept our inheritance from Him, He saturates us with Himself. He dwells within us and us within Him simultaneously. We take on a new nature because He is giving us His nature. This does not mean we become God. But it does mean we become like Him in our identity just as a son is like his natural father. He isn’t his natural father, but he can be like him. The Bible equates our union with our spouse – our oneness – to give analogy of the oneness we can have with God. The husband doesn’t become the same person as the wife, but they become one. It’s a mystery of unity. In the earliest days of the Church the followers of Christ were dubbed “Christians” as a derogatory term meaning “little Christ.” The irony is that there is great truth espoused even when it was done to be derogatory. The truth is, as believers, our lives are to be a reflection of Him. What was intended as an insult was really a testimony of the witness of the early Church and how they were living lives that mirrored their Savior.

Addendum To "More Thoughts On God's Goodness"

In the comments of my post “More Thoughts on God’s Goodness” it is asserted that morality is either arbitrarily dictated by God or it exists outside of God and consequently God is bound by an external moral standard. First of all, those are not the only possibilities, but let us examine the latter assertion first.

Instead of saying morality let us change that to “good.” If goodness is outside of God and God is bound to it, it would be eternal like God and uncreated like God then we would have this metaphysical non-God standard of goodness with no being attached to it that exists independently and outside God. This seems highly unlikely. We would be positing the eternal substance of good without any attachment to any person, being, entity, God. We would be positing something extremely abstract and unimaginable. Furthermore, if God was bound to conform to an outside standard, He would not be an independent self-existent Being for He would have need of adaptability to eternal goodness. He would for all intents and purposes cease to be God and would not be in essence a good God, for goodness is something not found in Him, but found outside Him that while He could measure up to it, He wouldn’t be the measurement of it. Need I explain further how this paradox could not logically exist?

Moving on, to the first proposition that goodness is created by God. This is typically argued that whatever God decrees is good. For instance, He could suddenly decide to decree that “rape” is good and it would be so. This would be an arbitrary and ever changing standard based on the whims of God. In this scenario, people assert that God creates goodness and could just as easily declare evil things good because He decrees it. This does not work as a standard of goodness. For one, for God to be God, He is unchangeable. He is always Himself. If He needed to be whimsically one thing and then another, He would cease being God. For God is the greatest being that nothing greater can be imagined. If there was someone greater than the Judeo-Christian God, then that Being would be God. If no one greater exist and it were possible to be greater than God, then God would not be God. Thus, necessarily being the greatest, He must be perfectly good, pure, holy, worthy, just, merciful, loving, and righteous.

A possibility was not proffered in the assertion about the nature of goodness that avoids the paradox and the whimsical arbitrary dictator. That is that goodness is not eternally external to God, nor created by God as an external created standard, but it is His nature. He is goodness. All He is the perfect standard of goodness. Not a representation of goodness, but in real essence goodness itself. Goodness isn’t an abstract invisible set of laws and rules. It isn’t separate from God. Jesus’ disciples called Him the Good Teacher. Jesus asked them, “Why do you call me good? You know that there is none good, but the Father.” Jesus was asking them if they realized they were accepting Him as one with God. For He knew they knew only God was “good.”

One can argue that this idea makes our use of the word “good” meaningless. Because when we say an apple taste good we are not saying it is God. No, we are saying that it lines up with a high standard of taste as far as apples go. We use the word in many different ways just as we use the word love in a variety of ways that does not communicate the fullness of love. We say we love our child, but we also say we love going bowling. This does not mean that the love we have for our child is on the same plain as the love of a sport or an object. We still know the difference, even though we use the word in both instances.

Christians believe that we become righteous when we receive Jesus gift of salvation. Sometimes we give the wrong impression as if Jesus hands salvation out to us. In reality, He gives us Himself who is salvation. We become righteous because we enter union with God. He doesn’t give us righteousness, He is righteousness. He doesn’t give us goodness, He is goodness. He doesn’t give us love, He is love. We can have shadows and tastes of this reality before we know Him, but the real tangible essence of these things are only found in Him and we only gain them by being in Him relationally. That is why the greatest commandments are to love God and from that place of love of God and being loved by God we can live out the second greatest commandment to love people. When God’s love is within us it naturally overflows to others. This is why the Scriptures say we cannot hate people and claim we love God, for we do not know God’s love if we hate people. This is actually the standard Scriptures say that unbelievers have to judge Christians. Jesus said that it is our love for each other and the world that shows that Jesus is really the Son of God and that it’s all true.

If I do not live a life of love towards you or towards anyone, you have reason to believe I do not know God and I have nothing true to say about Him. Being in Christ is a highly experiential reality. It is more than intellectual belief in the existence of God and the acceptance of the worldview of Christianity. It is not akin to religious service because of that intellectual accent. It is a viable tangible living relationship. Granted there are times when it doesn’t feel like it and I don’t feel that tangibility. However, there are so many times where that relationship is alive and journeys to new depths and new experiences. It is a journey through deserts, valleys, mountains, and sometimes you feel like you’re soaring with the eagles and other times you feel like you’re traveling through a desert. But that joy of having even one day with the Lord is worth more than a thousand elsewhere. However, God delights to spend time with His children and we don’t have to sustain on only one day of tangibly relating with Him. We can have an eternity with Him that begins not when we die, but when we begin to live with Him now.

Just like any relationship it is cultivated by spending time with Him and talking with Him and listening to Him. It is cultivated by love and trust. However, it is His love working in us that enables us to know Him. He does the work. He asks us to rest in Him. All service is done out of a place of that rest. It seems like a contradiction, but it is a beautiful harmony when you see it lived out. It is part of that journey in learning how it all works. I’ve met people that have a pretty good handle on it and they are a joy to be around. I’m still learning, as I am sure are they. The Kingdom of God is a big place. Jesus said His Father’s house has many rooms. There is a lot of exploring to do, and He invites us to explore the deep things of Him. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and it is to the glory of kings to search it out. It is a joy to journey with God. He is totally amazing.

Regarding Heaven & Hell

A common question of the skeptic to a Christian is the conundrum of how one can believe in a loving God who “sends” people to hell. I can understand how a person could view this belief as unreasonable. However, if one truly thinks through this matter, one can understand it is not unreasonable at all.

First of all it is not difficult for one to believe in a loving God and heaven. It is when the idea of hell enters the picture that a person begins to question God's love. Now if heaven exists as a place where people who have passed from this earth reside with God in all splendor and majesty it would follow that this place would be a desirable place to be. If there was no hell and all people went to heaven it would follow that heaven would not be "heaven" at all, but simply a new place of existence after death with the same people and problems as life on earth. There certainly would not be peace and harmony if people who were lovers of themselves and not of God were then forced to live with God. This would not be heaven for them.

So for heaven to be a place of harmony with God there must also be a place where there is no harmony with God, for those that refuse to accept harmony with God. If one rejects God would it only stand to reason that they would not want to be in a place of God for all eternity. Would a loving God force them to do so?

Moreover, if we start with the presupposition that God is a loving God what does that look like? Would God be a loving God if He forced people to love Him? He would only have one option that would exclude the necessity of hell. Namely, to create robots who have no freedom, but must obey Him and love Him.

So, what does a loving God do? The only way a loving God can exhibit that love is to allow us to have free will that He does not overpower. He gives us plenty of signs of His love, but He does not force us to accept that love or to love Him back. He does this even though it causes him pain, just like a loving earthly father would be hurt if his child rejected his love. He does all that a loving God can do to love and provide a free way for us to have communion with Him forever. For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16) He is always in pursuit of us with His love.

Now you may be objecting that it is unloving for God to dictate that we love Him and have relationship with Him or suffer. However, the truth is that it is good for us to love God. It is our need that is fulfilled when we love Him. We only hurt ourselves when we reject His love. We do not hurt Him. He doesn’t become less God when we reject Him. He doesn’t need our love to sustain Himself. But He loves us and knows that in Him all things have the fullness of life. He is the life giver. In Him is life. When we fight that reality we encounter suffering, death, and trouble in this world because we are living in opposition to how we are designed to live. It’s like a fish trying to live on dry land. It wasn’t designed to do so, plain and simple. The best habitat for a fish is water. The best habitat for humanity is living united with God through an amazing love relationship. But if we refuse it, as we have the freedom to do, we naturally are the fish flopping around on dry land. We lack the necessary components of the fullness of life. Naturally that creates a problem for us. The problems we face on earth due to our separation from Him are there to point us back to Him. For instance, when a child puts his hand too close to a flame, he feels heat and pulls back knowing that to go further would hurt his hand. However, if the child had no pain receptivity, as some have such a rare condition that they feel no pain; he would burn his hand off and not know he was doing it. The pain is a protection to one’s life.

When things aren’t going right, it’s time to look around and find out why. We all have this sense of how things ought to be, and yet we often ignore that sense and think things are as good as it gets. If so, we wouldn’t have this longing for something greater. That desire is there, because that desire has a fulfillment. People try to fill that longing in all kinds of different man made ways. But the only way to fill real longing in one’s heart is through knowing God and coming into His Kingdom.

God gave us free will and man chose to break communion with God and go his own way. Still God provided a way that man could be forgiven and find communion with God again. That way was by sending His own Son, Jesus, who is blameless in every way to pay the price for the sins of mankind.

The Bible says that Jesus, while being God, humbled himself to take human form and even humbled himself to die via crucifixion to pay the price for sins that He did not commit to bridge the divide between God and man. Man need not and cannot work his way back to God. Nor does man need to die for his own sins, but man simply needs to accept that there is nothing he can do to come to God, but to surrender his heart freely and accept God's free and gracious gift of salvation.

Doesn't this sound like a loving God? Just to recap, He gave us free will. We rejected Him. He then sent His Son to die in our place so that we can still enter into the love He has for us if we so choose. And He won't force anyone to have relationship with Him. But He stands at the door of our heart and knocks. He lets us know that He is there, but He won't force the door open. He waits for us to choose to open our heart or close it to Him. The choice is ours, not His. He gave us the choice because He loves us. He desires that none perish, that is His heart, but because He loves us He has to allow us to choose to have life in Him or to perish because our life is not in Him. We can live now with Him forever or we can never live with Him forever. What more could a loving God do to show His great love?

What is Righteousness?

Righteousness happens in us when we become reconciled to God through Christ. We are aligned to His rightness. The evidence of being righteous is living rightly, but living rightly doesn’t make us righteous. We can’t earn it by works, but are freely given it by grace. We gain a new nature in Christ, one that is reconciled to God and is free of the impurity of sin. Evidence of that new nature is a new way of living; living from love, not from fear, or by following rules. We do what is right because we are in God’s love and it overflows from us back to Him and our fellow man. We do what is right not out of a moral obligation or duty, but because His nature flows through us.

Fear is the opposite of love. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” (I John 4:18) Love always trust, always preservers, and always hopes. It is kind. Not self seeking. It is sacrificial. It keeps no record of wrongs. It does not easily anger. It always protects. (I Cor. 13)

When we are reconciled to God’s love we are made righteous and we live lives of love. Love is perfected in us as we mature in our relationship with Him. We grow in love as we grow in Him. We do what is right because we love, not because we fear. We do what is right because we desire to, not because we ought to, because His love motivates us internally.

We drink from his eternal love; a well spring that never runs dry. We don’t depend on ourselves for the strength to “be moral” we depend on Him for a changed nature being made righteous by His sacrifice and living accordingly by His power.

Theology: The Triune God

God’s triune nature is an essential part of who God is and how He relates to man. All of God is eternal. Every attribute, every nature, every part of His being is eternal. Scripture proclaims in Jeremiah 10:10 “But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God, the eternal King.” Also consider, Habakkuk 3:6, “His ways are eternal.”


When we speak of God the Father, the first person of the Trinity , we are speaking of an eternal Father. Therefore, for God to be a Father to man, He must first have always been a Father by His eternal nature. He was a Father before creation to the eternal Son, Jesus. If God became a Father because He created then He would have become something He had not been. This is impossible. For God never changes for He is never lacking anything. He has always been perfect in His eternalness. He spoke a great reality when He told Moses that His name is “I AM.” He spoke of His eternality, His completeness. Thus, for God to be a Father, He has always had a Son who was of the same substance of Himself, being fully God. The Son had to also be eternally the Son. He didn’t gain Son status, for He always existed as the Son of God. Jesus said to the Pharisees, “before Abraham was born, I Am” (John 8:58). If one denies the eternal God nature of the Son, then the Father nature of God is denied as well. One cannot exist without the other. John 17:24 says that God loved Jesus before the creation of the world. The Holy Spirit is also eternally binding the love of God to the love of the Son and is our Counselor, because He has eternally been thus. Romans 5:5 reads “God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.”


To break this down in a natural analogy, man gains his identity in relation to other people. A father becomes a father when he has a child. A wife becomes a wife when she gains that identity in relation or in reference to having a husband. Without a husband she is not a wife. Without a child, a person is not a parent. A human woman, contrary to popular sentiment, does not become a mother because she loves her pet like a child. Her pet is different from her and not her offspring. God did not become a father of mankind because He created mankind. He always is a Father because He always has a Son. He is a Father to mankind because He is first a Father to the Son of God.


God is a personal God because He has relationship within the Trinity. He doesn’t gain His personal nature from His creation. If there is no interpersonal God being such as the Christian God, there can be no personal God to creation. In fact, if God was this cosmic static entity with no persons of the Trinity He could not be self-existing. He would then not even be God at all for He would need something else outside Himself to sustain His identity. The finite creation cannot lend the framework to support an infinite God. God’s identity has to be secure before creation or separate from creation. He must be self-referencing. He must be His own identity framework. Thus any religion that posits a non-relational God cannot logically support the existence of God. Moreover polytheism fails to be a foundational system of belief for each of the many gods would have to be finite for you cannot have more than one all powerful God. It isn’t logically possible. Thus multiplicity of gods lends itself to finiteness of gods and that is not an adequate foundation for they would be in need of a self-evident eternal God themselves.


In conclusion, the nature of God being: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is essential belief about who God is and how we can have a personal relationship with Him. For without His personal nature within the Trinity there would be no personal relationship between Him and all creation.

Eternal Love Effectuates Eternal Good

God’s love is the foundation of which flows His goodness. Jesus said that loving God and loving people as we love ourselves are the greatest commandments that keep all others. When we are properly related to God and in proper loving relationships with people we treat them the way they ought to be treated. We live the way we ought to, because we love. When one person loves another properly they are good to them. A loving Father is good to his children. Even in rendering punishment upon a child, he is good for he punishes because He loves the child. Real love includes being able to render correction, rebuke, or punishment.


God is good, because God loves. His goodness is an extension of His love. God’s attributes are eternal. Were they not eternal, He would not be God for God’s nature must be complete in and of Himself: self evidently. If God depended upon anything outside of Himself, He would not be God. Love is actualized through relationships not in isolation. We don’t actualize loving someone when we are not in relationship with that person. To know the love of a parent for a child, you must have a child in which you love as a parent loves a child. To know romantic love you must have an object of that love. Therefore for Him to love, He had to love before He created. He didn’t begin to love once He created the world. He always loved. He always was a personal God. That’s why the doctrine of the Trinity is so essential. For God to love mankind, He had to first love interpersonally the Son of God. Who is begotten of God versus created by God. For God to be a personal God, He had to be interpersonal eternally versus gaining His personal nature with reference to creation. Once again, every attribute of God must be eternal. God loves because He eternally loves the Son and the Son eternally loves the Father. God is the ultimate Father to mankind because He gains His fatherly identity through His relationship with the Son. The Holy Spirit is the agent of His love which binds the Father and the Son and who is given to each person who is in relationship with the Father through Jesus. Jesus said that the greatest act of love is to lay down your life for your friend. Jesus, while we were yet sinners, laid down His life for man. Jesus was purposed to do this before the creation of the world. Before we sinned, He was still going to lay down His life to bring mankind into holiness that is only found in God. Man was made dependent upon God. But the only way we could attain holiness is through God providing that to us by an extension of His grace to us which comes through His greatest act of love and that is sacrificing Himself for us. We were not made equal to God for the created cannot be equal to the Creator, thus to be brought into His holiness He had to elevate us by grace through His supreme act of love which is in Christ work on the cross. Jesus coming to give His life for man was not God’s back up plan because mankind messed everything up. It was still purposed to be. However, when man sinned, Jesus’ sacrifice included His forgiving us our sins.


The doctrine of the Trinity is essential to the existence of God. If God were not a Trinitarian Being He could not be, for a being to have an identity, he has it relationally to another. If God was this cosmic static entity with no persons of the Trinity He could not be self-evident. He gains identity from Himself because He is a personal being. Thus any religion that posits a non-Trinitarian God cannot theologically support the existence of that God. Moreover polytheism fails to be a foundational system of belief for each of the many gods would have to be finite for you cannot have more than one all powerful God. It isn’t logically possible. Thus multiplicity of gods lends itself to finiteness of gods and that is not an adequate foundation for they would not be eternal.


In conclusion, God, being perfect, loves perfectly and eternally and all ethics and morality derive from the goodness that flows from His love. This is why Jesus said the greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor and that the second hinges on the first. When we learn how to love God and to experience His love and compassion for us we are enabled to love our neighbor the way we ought. This is why I have repeatedly advocated that morality is not about following the letter of the law, but about the fulfillment of the law which is love. When we are filled up with God’s love we can love others the way we ought to and we do good by them as a byproduct of that relationship with God.


God loves mankind and His love is actualized and experienced through the Holy Spirit who draws all men unto Himself. God is loving us even when we rebel against Him. All the consequences for sin is to bring about our restoration unto Him. It is all for our good even when it doesn’t feel so good at the time. Hebrews 12:11 “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Even when God is allowing us to reap the consequences of our unrighteousness it is for our redemption.


The end product of a community of people who live lives of love is a beautiful picture. John Lenon asked the world to imagine a world with no religion. In reality, we need to imagine a world where God’s love is known by people and lived out through people. A world of people who live like Jesus lived would indeed produce a utopia. Imagine just a city of people who are living like Jesus. There would be no crime. The jails would be empty. There would be no hate. People would treat each other with kindness. They would always do good for their fellow man. God is calling us to such a way of living and it is possible through Christ.


However, there will always be those who will refuse to live as a part of the Kingdom of God. So even as this community of believers matures into this society built on love those outside of this society will be living lives in opposition to this reality. Hence the world will become darker and darker (more vile and destructive) and the church community brighter and brighter (more pure and glorified) until the day Christ comes for His Bride the Church.

Sunday Scribblings: First Meeting

The story of my meeting my husband starts well before we first met. Approximately two years prior someone I had never met spoke prophetically over me and told me that God had a covenant partner for me and together we would be called to the walk of the ministry. I had never dated before and really had no interest in dating for the sake of dating. I knew, however, that the person I would marry would be a good friend first and foremost. I believed that if I sought after God, God would supply this person in His timing and I was content.

One day, months before I would meet the man who became my husband, I had a day of discouragement. My younger sister was out on a date and I was hanging out with family. My mom’s cousin noticed my disposition and she took me aside that night in her front yard and knowingly encouraged me that God had the right person for me and she prayed that He would begin to open the door to that new chapter of my life.

Within a month or two my sister and I made plans to go see Star Wars Episode II one Sunday evening with friends from church. She gave my cell phone number to one of our friends to call us with the show time. That friend gave my number to a friend of his to call and set things up. Little did I know that I was conversing with my future husband, Joseph, over my cell phone that afternoon. We were officially introduced at the theater that evening. He attended my church, but we were not previously acquainted.

The following Sunday afternoon, Joseph called me and asked if my sister and I would like to hang out, maybe go to the movies or something. I declined as we had plans with family to go to By the Bay, a Big Band music event at the beach. He asked if he could come. I was shocked, but said he could come. I was thinking why in the world would he want to go with my family to hear Big Band music? I knew I had a love for old music, but who else my age would even endure such an event? I gave him directions to my house so that he could ride with us.

As the summer progressed we began to become friends through hanging out with church friends and talking via IM and the phone. I felt completely at ease as I had over heard him tell a friend that he was not pursuing any relationships at that time in his life as he wanted to wait on God’s provision. My sister and I spent much of the summer hanging out with him and other friends. Then it came time for my sister to return to college and for me to start classes again at a local college. By this time Joseph and I were good friends. He was easy to talk to and it was just natural. I didn’t have any pressure or expectations of dating. We were simply good friends. It wasn’t until the months that followed that our friendship blossomed and I suddenly realized he was the ONE. I made no indication of this realization, to him or anyone else. I waited until the day he told me he wanted to pursue a relationship with me with the hope of marriage, until I told him the feeling was mutual. I knew that I knew that I knew that he was the one God had for me to marry. We’ve been married just over four years now.

Joseph had been ordained as a pastor well before we met, but was not pastoring. Today he is pastoring and we are pursuing full time ministry, just as was prophetically spoken many years ago.

Goodness Derives From God

I would like to address the matter of humanities knowledge of good and evil from the Christian worldview. At this point, I am going to deal with the topic in a foundational philosophical manner that would be agreed upon by all theists. While theism is broader than Christianity, Christianity has the foundational adherence to the position I am herein presenting. Therefore I am not delving into Scripture nor Christian doctrine to address this topic at this point. In future posts, I will develop it out and provide a more detailed response as prompted by questions this post will undoubtedly produce.

As far as I have deduced, my audience accepts that there are good actions and behaviors as well as bad ones and that humans for the most part know the difference between the two. Further, I think all cultures no matter how remote have a system of right and wrong even if their standard of moral judgment is different than the next culture. So where does that idea come from? How did we gain a moral construct of right and wrong? Is it mere social conditioning? Is it merely instinctual impulses of survival? Is something wrong because society says it’s wrong? Can one culture condemn the actions of another as wrong? If so, by what standard?

Theists maintain that we have knowledge of the difference between good and evil (even if we disagree sometimes on specifics) because there is a standard of good outside of nature because a good God exists. When we break from that standard we have the conscious to know something doesn’t line up with the way we are created to live. We know when something is foreign to goodness.

From what has been presented to me thus far, atheists maintain that because they know right from wrong without believing in or fearing God that is proof that moral knowledge is not something related to knowing God. However, Christians maintain that we have a moral compass even if we are not brought up in Christianity or in religion. A person in the most remote village of Africa with no contact to the outside world would have a moral compass even if some of his actions were barbaric to the civilized world. His village would still have a system of right and wrong because they are humans living in reality. Thus, atheists will have just as much knowledge of the existence of good and evil and the desire to be moral people as anyone else.

Atheists, from my rudimentary observations, maintain that Christians believe morality is connected to a system of punishment and rewards of a demanding judgmental invisible God. They believe, therefore, that Christianity is a manmade system of controlling people into an outdated conservative system of morality by manipulation and the promulgation of the fear of hell.

I can understand why it may look like this is a fair description of Christianity. If the only Christians I had ever met were the ones I encountered this summer at the beach holding signs listing sins God was going to judge people for and shouting about hell into a crowd of teenagers--I would run the other way too and declare it a barbaric brainless religion. I cannot say strongly enough that people like that are not representing true Christianity and are decidedly giving Jesus a bad name by their shameful actions. My husband, a pastor, spoke with these people when we came across them and asked that they cease antagonizing the crowd of angry youth. We emphatically urged the crowd to disperse, to no avail. They were having too much fun heckling the beach preachers. I don’t blame the young people for their responses. My husband and I were greatly disturbed by this misrepresentation of the heart of God towards people.

I would asks that people look past the extremist and religious nut cases to the real nature of truth and examine the truth claims themselves despite some of the misleading representations often depicted in the media and sometimes observed in real life. Please don’t let the attitude and actions of some keep you away from really examining the truth claims of the Christian worldview.

To touch briefly on a more specific Christian view of morality: it isn’t about adhering to rules out of fear of divine retribution or hope of divine rewards. For some, granted, it is thus. However, for many others it is simply this: that man is separated from God because of our sinful nature and consequently fails to live up to even his own standard of right and wrong perfectly. However, because Jesus paid the price of sin in our place we are freed from the bondage of sin and empowered by Christ to love and know God and love and live with our fellow humans the way we were created to do so.

What God asks from man, is not blind obedience, but a real tangible relationship that starts with accepting the free gift of salvation from sin and death offered through Jesus. Thus we become reconciled back to God, ensconced in His love, and we begin life anew learning from God how to be all he created us to be. The work Jesus did on the cross is not simply to redeem mankind, but to redeem all of creation back to its full glory.