The Fire of Our Actions or the Fire of His Presence

Luke 10: 25-37

In this paper we are going to look at how people accept, or do not accept themselves, and the images we can all project.  Before doing so, we look at the context to our reading, and make a comment on God’s command to love Him.

The Context

Imagine what it would be like if every time you put your hand in your pocket you pulled out a £50 note. Undoubtedly you would be very excited, and after the initial shock, would probably think of all the people you could help. Think of the surprise on the faces of friends and others who’d struggled without finance for so long, yet were suddenly able to see how to make ends meet through your giving. It would be an amazing time.

In Luke 10 we read of Jesus sending 72 disciples ahead of him to every town and place where he was going to go. Jesus tells them that they are to go out like lambs among wolves (v3). When we face difficulty we can often bring in our own coping mechanisms and ways that we think we should do things. Jesus wanted them to trust in God alone. They were to be like lambs amongst wolves, and came back rejoicing at what God had enabled them to do. Yet note what Jesus said to them: “…do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”  In other words, rejoice that you are mine. God ordained that these events were written down before we encounter the expert of the law (v25)

After reading about the expert in the law, and the parable that Jesus gave, we encounter Martha and Mary (Lk 10:38-41).

Many years ago I had a Morris1000 and on one occasion I had to change the gearbox. In order to get to it, it was necessary to take out the floor plan. The floor –plan was screwed down with bronze screws, which sheared off as I applied a screwdriver.  Many hours later I was hot, sweaty, frustrated and tired. My friend, whose garage I was using was a mechanic and he came over to help me. I remember moaning at him about how hard the job was and how it shouldn’t be difficult because I’d heard that Morris 1000’s were easy to work on. He laughed and told me that the popular Morris 1000 was only regarded as easy to work on when compared to the previous popular small car on the market, the Austin A40. In reality the sort of job I was doing was not easy. Having slowed down and listened to my friend, and taken the advice he gave, I was able to return to and complete the job in a much better frame of mind.

Martha is so caught up with what she has to do that she is distracted and moans to Jesus about Mary – “tell her to help me” She’s worried and upset, but Jesus tells her that only one thing is needed at this point in time. She should have sat down like Mary and listened to what He had to say. Life may not always be easy, but it is very different when we put Jesus first.

Between these incidents we read of an expert in the law who was nothing like the 72 disciples who trusted in God, or Mary, who, despite all that was going on, rested in the presence of the Lord.  This lawyer wanted to test Jesus (v25) and justify himself (v29). For some reason he was caught up in his own identity and achievements, and assumed that he knew what was acceptable and unacceptable to God.

The command to love

How you would respond to a stranger who walks up to you and says, “You will love me.” Perhaps you’d say something like, “you must have mistaken me for someone else,” or just walk away in embarrassment. After all, its unreasonable for someone to tell us to love them, isn’t it? Yet that is exactly what God tells us to do (Matthew 22:37).

Unlike our illustration, God has never sought to remain like a stranger standing on a touchline, watching men and women destroy their lives. God seeks to be involved in our lives: God wants to be known (Psalm 19:1-2; Rom 1)

God has always sought to make Himself known through His words, and acts of grace and mercy, which reveal His love and compassion towards fallen humanity. As the 18^th century poet, William Cowper (a man who suffered greatly from depression), once wrote, “Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.” It has always been God who has taken the initiative in building bridges towards our lives, where no bridges existed due to our fallen nature.

He is the One whose love for man is so clearly seen in His Son, Jesus Christ, – a love that has been present since before the beginning of time.

Today I found a large bee trapped in our bathroom. Bees are not made for bathrooms, but to pollinate flowers and benefit from spring-time and summer, so I opened a window and carefully let it escape.

You and I were not created to define our lives with the limitations of our own thinking. We were made for a much bigger environment – we were made for God, and nothing else will suffice.”

God tells us to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind because, as our Creator, and the One who loves us most, He knows we need to put Him first in our lives. This is a thinking, active love which leads to the balancing of our emotional lives, and the developing of an emotional love for God based on the truth.

If we do not put God first and seek to become rooted and established in His ways then we will become emotionally tied up with things that lead to distorted love. Whether we like it or not, things will go wrong if we make our image the centre of our attention, or personal gain, finance, fame, etc. If we do not have any real relationship with our heavenly Father, then we will end up in difficulty. As the 19^th century Swiss Philosopher and Poet Henri Amiel once wrote…

“The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings.”

God commands us to love Him because He knows just how much we need Him. God is love (1 John 4:8) and knows how we can get fullness of life from this world He has created. In living with Him we are able to overcome all that the world has thrown at us, and our own sinful nature. This overcoming does not come about by merely looking at what is wrong and saying, “I must deal with it”. Instead it comes about through a continuously developing relationship with the One who wants to be known as a Father.

The reason the world existed in the first place is because God wants to share love and life.  It is the healing of broken relationship through embracing all that God has done in Christ that enables us to grow. As we learn about God and grow in His grace, the emotional side of love begins to sprout and flourish.

“Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within the reach of every hand.” Mother Theresa.

Putting on an Image?

Having spent many years training in gyms I am very suspicious about something that others probably realised years ago. Society used to say that women spend more time than men on making themselves look good. But this is no longer the case. For example, in the men’s changing room at my local gym, there are invariably white areas of talcum powder on the floor, and deodorant sprayed on one side of the room, seems to find its way across to the other. There are also those who spend ages in front of the mirror doing their hair, and occasionally trying to flex a bicep, whilst others slap all sorts of lotions over their bodies.

There is nothing wrong with looking after oneself, yet there seems to be an increasing number of people who create an image to hide behind. This image is often built to compensate for feelings of inadequacy and failure that plague so many in western societies. Even at a young age there is an increasing number of people who feel they have failed, are inadequate, unloved and subsequently feel isolated and lonely.

In a recent programme dealing with so-called problem adolescents, it took two days to get one girl to take off her extreme make-up, and piercings. She screamed, swore, ranted and raved at anything and everyone, yet later accepted that she’d been hiding behind the image.  People in all areas of society can put up an image, often in order to hide real feelings, yet what people hide and deny will eventually begin to dominate them.

One of the most expensive ‘luxuries’ we can have is a wrong view of self, combined with what we then build, or allow into our lives in order to cope. This wrong view, and erroneous building programme can be very costly. It eats away at the real self, and demands everything like a spoilt child, because it always has to be maintained.

For example, many an overweight person has said they put on a smile and seek to be the life of the party because they feel so desperately useless about how they look.  They feel accepted because they are bubbly and cheerful; yet have to continually drum up this image, which masks what is really going on.  Whether we are willing to admit it or not, all of us can put on an image.

An Austrian millionaire recently started to give away his £3 million fortune after realising his riches were making him unhappy. The turning point had come during a three-week holiday with his wife in Hawaii. He wrote, “It was the biggest shock in my life, when I realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five star lifestyle is. In those three weeks, we spent all the money you could possibly spend. But in all that time, we had the feeling we hadn’t met a single real person – that we were all just actors. The staff played the role of being friendly and the guests played the role of being important and nobody was real.”

Everyone can hide behind an image

Becoming a Christian does not automatically mean we are perfect, and many of us come into church with the habits and attitudes we’ve adopted or had imposed on us over the years. Sometimes we have lived with these emotions and thought patterns for so long that we fail to see they are not part of the real us. For example, how many times have we heard the words, “I’ve always had a temper.”

All too often we carry on with some of our old coping mechanisms, often without realising it, and can end up combining these ways with a purely intellectual knowledge of Jesus. But does this really get us anywhere? Biblically speaking, knowing God speaks of a relationship whereby we engage with God. Unfortunately, many only know of God intellectually, in much the say way as the married man who says his wife is 65% water, 15% protein, 11% fat, 5% minerals, 0.1% carbohydrate, and so on.

In not really knowing how accepted they are in Christ, many believers continue to cover up feelings of inadequacy, and the damaged view of life they have become familiar with, without thinking through what they are doing. Yet God is still there to help us.

Through the love of our Heavenly Father, and His work of love through Christ, we, the rebels, were wholeheartedly accepted when we sought forgiveness and salvation. Although God comes against what we have become (as we would expect any loving parent to do), we are called to see that He has totally accepted us through Christ. There is nothing we can earn from God, and there is no image we have to maintain in order to make God love us. We are loved, and we are accepted.

“Jesus is prepared to accept those whom the world regards as unacceptable. He sits at table with those whom the world regarded as outcasts, such as tax collectors, the menial puppets of the Roman authorities. He mingles with those with whom respectable people would have no dealings, such as prostitutes. He was seen alone with women – a scandalous matter at the time – and talked to them as equals about the wonders of the kingdom of God (note the amazement of the disciples at this in John 4:27). He preached to Samaritans to the horror of the Jews. He mingled and spoke to, and even touched lepers, who had been cast out by society as unclean (Mark 1:40-42)…In short, Jesus was prepared to meet and accept even those whom society regarded as outcasts…”

Alistair McGrath, Self-Esteem, p 136

No matter how life has treated you, you are important

Recently, in the news, there was the story of a small 19” Chinese vase that had, for many years, been left on a shelf in a room where the owner’s dogs slept. The vase was discovered during a routine valuation for home contents insurance. Whilst researching the item it was found to be the only surviving unbroken vase from the Yuan dynasty. The 650-year-old vase (made at a time when the Black Death ravaged Europe and Marco Polo was exploring Asia) was sold at auction for £2.6 million. Up until this time it had been seen as of no value whatsoever.

There are those who feel they are of no value whatsoever, and as if society has put them on the back shelf and forgotten them, as life passes by. But where do these feelings of being somewhat useless and a failure come from? For example, who set the marker by which the healthy fifteen-year-old girl judges herself as too fat; or the family man sees himself as having failed his family for not being able to live in a more upmarket neighbourhood?

We were not created to live under the power of self-created images, or those imposed on us by others (. e.g. “you are worthless to me”).  We are important to God, who does not see us a statistic or faceless number in a crowd. He knows the number of hairs on our head (Mat 10:30), and, as scripture reveals, is very interested in us and wants us to know Him as a Father.

Through the work of another – Jesus – we are called to live in the power and love of the Holy Spirit as we grow in fellowship with our Heavenly Father.  God knows everything about us (Luke 12:7) and no matter what has happened to us, we are of value to Him, even if no one else thinks so (Matt 6:26, 1 Cor 1:26-29).

“But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith, and by praying in the Holy Spirit, maintain yourselves in the love of God, while anticipating the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings eternal life.” Jude 20

Love your neighbour as yourself

The lawyer who spoke to Jesus (Luke 10:25) wanted to know how to inherit eternal life. Jesus did not answer the question and instead asked him what was written in the Law. The lawyer correctly quoted scripture saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

Anyone who is open and honest would know they were not able to fulfil the demands of either law. In knowing this they would also recognise that their forgiveness and acceptance by God must be based on God’s love and not man’s attempts at fulfilling the Law, or personal achievements. Yet the lawyer was not seeing this.

The lawyer did not really understand the love of God because he was still trying to prove his worth, and justify himself (v29). How then, was it going to be possible for him to reach out to others with the love of God? Quite simply, it wasn’t, because you can’t give out that which you have not first received yourself. After all, you cannot breathe out air that you have not breathed in.

Covenant people are those who should already know and benefit from God’s great love, and as 1 John 4:19 reads, “We love because he first loved us.” We did not earn God’s love, nor do we deserve it. We did not receive God’s love because of how we looked, or for what God was going to be able to get out of us.

The scriptures state very clearly that God’s people should know they are accepted through God’s work alone, and are to love their neighbour as themselves (Lev 19:18, Mt 22:39, James 2:8, Gal 5:14). However, if the barriers are still up in our live, or we carry on hiding behind an image, then it is going to be very difficult to really experience the love of Christ, and share the fruit of His relationship with us.

The barriers that we all put up in our lives, and the images we live with should all start to fall away as we recognise just how accepted we are by God through Christ.  As an example of this, look at Luke 15 where we read of a returning prodigal son.

Through circumstances that made him aware of his failings, the prodigal, seeing himself as of no value as a son, decided to go back to his father as a servant in order to earn money. In being confronted by his father’s love, this wayward son began to realise that good works had nothing to do with being accepted by his father. In knowing this, the barriers could then begin to come down, as false identity (no value as a son – only able to be a servant) was removed.

In experiencing God’s love I am able to accept myself with all my limitations and inadequacies because His love is an unconditional love.  I no longer have to strive for acceptance, or to prove myself and the fruit of this is that I can love my neighbour as myself.

My neighbour can make all the same mistakes that I can make, yet I am called to love him or her. I do not love them for what I can get out of them, but love them out of what I have been given. If I have to challenge them, it is not to prove myself right, but because I know that God wants the very best for them and not just for me.

We are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and love our neighbour as ourselves. Yet we should not make the mistake that many do, in assuming that everyone automatically loves him or herself because God says, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Not everyone loves himself or herself

In Greek mythology there was a man called Narcissus who was known for his good looks and cruelty to those who loved him. The ‘gods’ punished him by making him fall in love with a reflection of himself. He died through not being able to leave the beauty of his own reflection. This is where the word ‘Narcissism’ comes from, and it speaks of having too much interest in one’s own appearance and abilities. For example, people might look at the girl who is wearing too much make-up, or the egoistic man who is always talking about what he is doing, and assume they are narcisstic.

In a society that increasingly seeks to promote self it becomes easy to automatically assume that everyone is somewhat narcisstic; yet in a lot of cases nothing could be further from the truth.

Many teenage girls feel useless and unloved, and hide behind layers of make-up in order to be accepted. Apart from this all the ‘you need to look like this’ subtly reiterates the message that,  “You’re not good enough as you are.”

Many people who seem to have egoistic tendencies, and who constantly go on about what they are doing, do so because deep in their hearts they feel unsheltered, unloved, insecure and at the mercy of others. They are always talking about what they are doing as a means of justifying or proving themselves to others.

Elsewhere in society there are those who have an almost chameleon-like identity, as they seek to blend in with whatever group they are mixing with. Such a person is often a habitual liar because he or she needs to agree with others in the group they seek to socialise with, as a way of being accepted. They go along with one way of thinking, and then in another group accept a different way of thinking that is almost the total opposite of what they had previously accepted. Then they proceed to a third group and on and on it goes with people wondering who or what they really are.

There are too many subtle ways in which our society says “you will only be accepted if you are good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, talented enough” and so on. Apart from the pressure this puts upon people, there is also the added pressure in that no one caught up in trying to maintain an identity can be sure they’ve enough of what society seems to value anyway.  Apart from this, a person caught up like this has to, in some way, control those around them – and this is virtually impossible.

For example, the young girl who wants to lose more weight is really doing so in an attempt to control the opinions of people around her. In seeking to do this she is setting herself the mammoth task of controlling her environment in order to be accepted. Think of all the effort and pain people go through in order to change themselves so that others might like them

“…Over the last century and a half, life has moved from the country to cities, and from small, stable, face-to-face relationships to fast, superficial, largely anonymous acquaintances. The result is an accompanying shift from an emphasis on internal character to one’s external appearance.”

Oz Guiness in, When No One Sees, p187.

Where did it all go wrong?

It has been said that you see how good the politics of a nation are, by the character of people it produces. For example, in Iraq many citizens were brought up under a dictatorship where might was always right. When that dictatorship was toppled, it was hardly surprising that many would still want to live by the law of the gun because it was all they were used to.

Going back a few years to the Vietnam War we see the same thing. Many American soldiers suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because for the first time they encountered a people-group who regarded human life as no more valuable than the life of an animal. Our environment and the ethos of our society have a lot to do with how we view ourselves.

Scripture clearly reveals we were created to live in the environment of God’s love and care, provided by the One who wants to be known as a true Father (Luke 11:2 Psalm 68:5; Rom 8:15). In this environment, man had the opportunity to learn, grow, and, in maturity, benefit even more from what was freely given.

The environment of care that God seeks to place us in (Ex 33:14; Matt 11:28), and the pattern of life that He wants us to live by is not given by one who seeks to impose restrictive measures upon life. It comes from the one who is the very heart of life (John 14:6) – life itself.

Everyone should be brought up in an environment of care and protection; in a society that does not value a person primarily by how they look, what they do or achieve.  Unfortunately due to the increasing pressure of wrong-belief systems on society, resulting in unhappy dysfunctional people and broken relationships, there are many people who see themselves as of no value, even in their own homes. For example, how many parents tell their children they will never amount to anything, or moan about wrong attitudes without trying to find out how they got there in the first place.

Don’t rush in to change people

People often live with an image that makes them feel more comfortable about themselves, or compensates for feelings of inadequacy. For example, there was the recent story of a woman who said she always tried to be cheerful and happy; the life and soul of the party. In reality she was desperately lonely and felt useless about her weight. She tried to  compensate for this with a ‘bubbly’ personality that would make people like the very person she hated: herself..

Why does it seem to be so easy for people to rush in and try to change others with words like, “you shouldn’t be living like that”, and “you’ve really got to change?”

Part of the answer has to lie in our quick fix mentality and lack of willingness to really get alongside others with a desire to understand where they are coming from. In judging people, and compartmentalising them so quickly we absolve ourselves of the real responsibility we have to care for others. In judging so quickly we also place more pressure on those who are already struggling. Is this really going to help them?

For example, if you or I had been desperately holding on to a pattern of living that propped us up and made us feel good, we‘d feel angry and threatened with the challenge to change. This might well be because of fear and the feeling that others are personally attacking us, when in reality they are, albeit clumsily, coming against what we have become, and doing so in order to help.  Think about it!

In every society there are those who have been made to feel small and inadequate. These people often spend years trying to prove they are somebody, often without realising it. Telling such a person, (who in reality is caught up in self-trust; eg: “this is how I am protected”), they’re going about things the wrong way doesn’t necessarily help if it is simply done in a moralising way and without genuine concern. After all, why would a person who’s struggled so badly take down barriers built to protect himself or herself, just because they are told to?  If you or I had spent years living in the ‘house’ of our own thinking and coping mechanisms, do we really think we are going to destroy that ‘house’ purely because someone tells us?  Probably not.

People need to see Gods love. People need to see Jesus, and we need to make sure it is His light that shines through our lives in our words and actions (Matt 5:16) in order to help in the best way possible. In seeing and learning about the love of Christ there is the opportunity for burdened, troubled, and  struggling people to learn to trust in a person (Christ) who is not out to hurt or destroy them, but to offer forgiveness and reconciliation.

The real picture

In our modern day society the word ‘sin’ is often seen as little more than a moral word, with many viewing it as a leftover from the Victorian era, and used by judgemental people constantly telling others how bad they are.  With so many people viewing the word ‘sin’ through this framework of thinking, is it really surprising that so many people ignore it?

God’s word reveals that man is sinful, yet paints a very different picture from that mentioned above.

Sin is to miss the mark; to miss the very best that our Father has for us. Sin is rebellion and the refusal to live as a son or daughter, and sinning is ‘to burn the name.’ But what does this mean?

In Hebrew thought, ‘name’ speaks of nature and character and ‘burning the name’ means to destroy who we really are with our wrong thinking and actions. Our Father comes against this way of living because of His great love for us, and the fact that all sin is totally offensive to Him.

In seeing that God is against what we have become, but very much for us, we

find hope. There is someone out there who does not want to write us off, regard us as a total failure, or who sees us as a second-class citizen.  Through His revelation we begin to understand what is wrong with our lives, and why it is offensive to God, yet we are not threatened. Instead there is hope. Someone has made a way for us to turn from our old ways of existing, to life in Christ. This is what repentance is all about. It is about turning from what destroys our lives, along with all the loneliness, emptiness, and insecurity it brings, to the One who is perfect love (1 John 4:8)

One of the Hebrew pictures behind the word, ‘repentance’, which helps us understand the meaning of the word, is ‘to destroy the house’. But exactly what does this mean?

When we begin to understand the love of Christ that is extended to us, we can become more open to hearing what He has to say. We see someone who has the right blueprint of life – who is life itself. The One who is life itself, convicts us, showing us that our way is offensive to Him – our heavenly Father who loves us and is against what we have become. We also see that His love is there for us despite what we are by way of the world.

Once upon a time there was a young man whose car broke down on a cold winter’s day. One of the bolts on his alternator had broken off, so he used a mole-wrench to hold the alternator in place, and carried on driving. Later on that day he filled his car up at a petrol station, and on paying for the fuel casually mentioned to the cashier how he’d fixed his own car. The garage mechanic who was listening in immediately challenged what he had done and told him how the wrench he’d used could have flown off and caused a serious accident. The young man was shocked to realise how wrong he had been, and immediately took the wrench off, and booked the car in to be fixed.

In repentance we admit that our way of living and protecting ourselves is wrong, and that before God we are guilty’ and in doing so we ‘destroy the house.’ We leave our own building project, and the way we protect and look after ourselves, to embrace forgiveness and reconciliation found in the work of Christ. In the light of God’s nature and character, we see that our ‘house of self-promotion and protection’ was more of a prison than a house.

None of us lived the right way before we came to Christ.  But when we called out to Jesus in repentance and faith we were accepted. We were justified (Romans 5:1), that is, we were pronounced right by God. This does not mean that we have been made right in the sense that we will never do anything wrong again. What it means is that someone has said that we are accepted, and the person who says this, and accepts us, is our heavenly Father.

We are pronounced right because of the work of Jesus that has been credited to our account, so to speak. Being pronounced right through the work of another speaks of our position, and does not mean that we are suddenly a squeaky clean person who never gets it wrong.

Being pronounced right through Christ means that I have been made right with God, yet it does not mean that I am automatically right inside, because I still have my old ways to deal with. What has happened is that I am now indwelt by God’s Spirit who will help me appropriate all that has been credited to my account because of Jesus.

If I had been made Lord of the Manor and given the title along with a million acres, I would have the position and land, yet still, in many respects be the same person I was before receiving the title and land. My position is what has changed, due to the work of another. My life would now be about learning to appropriate and grow through working with what I had been given.

As already stated, my new life is now about appropriating what has already been credited to my account (in going back to our illustration it would be learning how to use the land). This appropriating is done through learning to trust in God, letting old ways go, and moving forward in the power of His Spirit. The evidence of this maturing is seen in Christ likeness.

Accepted

Loving ourselves is not about thinking we are the most wonderful person in the world. It is about accepting ourselves, in knowing that we are loved by another, despite all our limitations and failings. It is also recognising that God will help us deal with issues in our lives, not so that we can become more lovable to God, but so that we can receive more of the love that is already present.

If we can’t see that God has accepted us through the work of Jesus, we may end up trying to build what we think makes us acceptable.  As has already been said, our society is full of people who compensate their feelings of worthlessness by adopting an image that makes them feel better. For example, it may be the young man who strives to earn a certain salary. In doing so he hopes to overcome feelings of inadequacy and become more acceptable to others. He ends up working far too many hours and becomes susceptible to even the slightest form of criticism because he is so rooted in having to achieve at all costs. Then again, it could be the young girl who constantly spends what she does not have on fashionable clothes in order to fit in.

If we have genuinely come to know God in the way the Bible speaks of knowing, then we experience his love and know that we do not have to prove ourselves or vie for His attention. When we experience this love from our heavenly Father and the barriers of self-protection and self-elevation begin to come down, we find freedom, safety, security and great strength in Christ.

“In Jesus we have met the one who has the authority and power to forgive our fevered search to gain security through deception, coercion, and violence. To learn to follow Jesus means we must learn to accept such forgiveness, and it is no easy thing to accept, as acceptance requires recognition of our sin as well as vulnerability. But by learning to be forgiven we are enabled to view other lives not as threats but as gifts. Thus in contrast to all societies built on shared resentments and fears, the Christian community is formed by a story that enables its members to trust the otherness of the other as the very sign of the forgiving character of God’s Kingdom.”

S. Hauerwas in, ‘A Community of Character’ p 50

Imagine

Imagine a struggling person arriving at a church gathering where everyone tries to be super-spiritual because they assume this is what everyone should be like as Christians. How is the struggling man or woman going to find any help in this sort of gathering? All they are going to see are people who’ve swapped the images they protected themselves with in the world for a hollow Christianised version of life they now hide behind. They have put on an image of ‘I’m ok,’ and, ‘praise the Lord’ and may even quote a few Bible verses, but there is no real power in their lives. There is no real engagement with God and no lasting transformation (Rom 12:1-2).

To live in such a way does not quench God’s love, yet prevents us from

fully receiving what is always and ever present. People who live with a false mask of spirituality may well be able to offer practical help to the struggling person, who has walked in. However this will fall far short of the life-transforming work of Jesus.

God did not break into our circle of existence so that we could live behind a religious image of what we think Christianity is all about. God broke into the circle of our existence to offer us life.

God has broken into our circle of existence

Many years ago an occult shop opened in the city where I was studying. I immediately thought that I had to do something about it, and on three or four occasions started walking to the shop, which was about five minutes from where I lived. The adrenalin was pumping and I probably thought of myself, to some extent, as some sort of crusader who’d deal with the enemy. Fortunately for me, and the poor person I was going to do battle with, I never got to the shop on those occasions. God stirred my heart and I realised something was wrong, and that this something was someone: me. I was seeking to live some sort of image that made me feel good. God graciously broke into this self-destructive thinking and freed me.

Many months later, I drove past the shop on a beautiful sunny day. As I looked at the shop I felt an overwhelming compassion for the people working there. I knew that this was now God’s timing.  I stopped the car, went in, and had a really amazing conversation with the owner; so much so that he said he would consider selling Bibles. In His grace and mercy God had broken through the way I wanted to deal with the shop, and enabled me to reach out in the power of His love to help someone in need.

Do you ever feel as if you are like a human hamster on a wheel, or as someone who has to keep everything moving in order to prevent life falling apart?  Do you ever feel like a plate-spinner, rushing from plate to plate to keep it spinning? Do you really know what it is to rest: to stop striving in your own strength and reorientate your thinking around your Heavenly Father’s teaching? Is there the real fruit of His presence in our lives, or do we just go on thinking, “I must do things this way in order to be accepted, or” or, “I’m not allowed to do this” and so on?  This can become little more than a list of do’s and don’ts, which slowly wear us down and leave us devoid of the Spirit’s power.

Many of us have been caught up in a self-empowered circle of life where no one dares stop, because there seems to be no way to step off the merry-go-round of life, so to speak. For things to really change, it requires someone else to step into our circle and rescue us, and this is exactly what Christ does (Phil 2:5ff). Jesus came to rescue us from self and the penalty of death.  In love, the author of life stepped into our circle of existence with the offer of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Accepting myself in Christ.

In order to find freedom in Christ I need to accept myself, despite my failings, because despite my failings, I am acceptable to God through Christ. This is because His work and the relationship that He gives, frees me from constantly trying to make up for a lack of love, or feelings of inadequacy or failure in my life.

Instead of rushing through life in a panic, or simply lying down and giving up on myself as totally useless, I can learn to accept myself. This acceptance of self can come about because of Jesus who broke into the circle of my existence. In seeing His love I am able to see the truth about life and the existence I created for myself or had imposed on me by others. In seeing the One who loves me I can begin to acknowledge the things that so often motivated me: my hurt, my pain and feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and so forth. In the environment of His grace and mercy I can begin to let my  barriers of self-protection down, and move away from being the rebel, to being the son. This is how it is that people like Zacchaeus could begin to change for the better (Luke 19) – because Jesus came into his circle of existence.

In the story of Zacchaeus we find a short man who was unable to see Jesus because of the crowd around him. Zacchaeus ran ahead of the crowd, outside the city and climbed a sycamore-fig tree (a tree not allowed to grow in cities).  The crowd must have spotted Zacchaeus because Jesus tells him to come down quickly. Undoubtedly the people in the crowd would have wondered how Jesus was going to treat this man who, in their eyes, deserved nothing but punishment.

Instead of siding with the crowd, Jesus told Zacchaeus that he was going to eat at Zachs’ house, knowing full well how others would view this. Through this act of kindness, an ostracised, hardened tax collector saw that someone had ‘crossed the line’ for him; someone had broken into his circle of existence. As Jesus spent time with Zacchaeus, the barriers came down and Zach acknowledged his wrongdoing and started to change.  God had reached out to Zacchaeus, and now Zach was reaching out to God.

Scripture is full of pictures relating how God breaks into the circle of existence man creates, and offers life. Another very clear example of this reaching in, is seen at Calvary.

At Calvary we find two thieves desperately trying to deal with their pain, frustration and fear by hurling insults at Jesus (Matt 27:44; Mark 15:31); yet one man began to see something in Jesus. Think of what it must have been like for him.

There you are at Calvary. You’d lived life your own way and now this is it; there is no way of escape and nothing you can do – you are going to die. You’d be watching others around you, hearing their insults, and would have seen some of the crowd heading back to their homes in the city where you’d lived your life at the expense of others. There is nothing left for you; nobody is interested in you. Nobody wants you, and all you can see is death waiting around the corner.  There are no more chances and certainly no hope. This really is the end for you.

As the panic begins to set in, and fear grips the heart, you join others and throw insults at Jesus. For a brief moment it seems to help because you don’t feel as if you’re on your own. You’re shouting insults with the others, but something is starting to work on the inside, and you turn to look at the one on the cross next to you.

Time moves on and the pain bites deeper. In your fear and loneliness, you begin to think about your life; and then there’s this person next to you. You think you know why the authorities are crucifying Jesus, yet begin to realise that there is something different about Him. There is a stirring in your heart. Perhaps it is true; perhaps this is the Messiah – and God starts breaking into the fading circle of your existence.

Light is dawning in your mind, and you begin to catch a glimmer of the truth and start rebuking the other man who is mocking Jesus. All is becoming clear to you and you cry out, to the other thief “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And rightly so, for we are getting what we deserve for what we did, but this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:40).

The thief then turns to Jesus – to the one who is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13:8); and who is still reaching out with unconditional love, even on a cross. The thief asks Jesus to remember him when Jesus comes into His Kingdom, and Jesus births hope and love into the thief’s life with the words, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”(Luke 23:43).

I doubt whether anyone other than Jesus would have given the time of day to this criminal. Most, if not all, of those at Calvary were only interested in seeing him die. The last physical experience this man would have had at the hands of others would be when executioners broke his legs. In doing so he would no longer be able to breathe properly and would slowly asphyxiate.

This criminal was getting what he deserved in the eyes of all, and they would have been shocked and offended at the idea that God could give the man forgiveness and eternal life. But God has drawn close to us with the offer of life so that we can come to Him in repentance and faith. His Son breaks into the circle of our existence, and not in order to impose some strange sort of life on us, but to bring life itself, for He is life.

“The drama of Golgotha was not the tragic conclusion of one human destiny; on the contrary; it was the decisive moment for the destiny of all mankind. We must take seriously the fact that this happened “for us.”

Prof. A. Nygren in, ‘Christ and His Church’, p 92

Accepting others

Through Jesus, God accepts us. We do not need to put up barriers; we don’t need to hide behind an image, and we can begin to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. As the Third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit continues the work of Christ within us. In Him ordinary people such as you and I can do extraordinary things totally out of proportion to our own strength and ability. We can break free from all old thought patterns, and grow in His grace even when a storm is blowing around us. We can walk with Him, even though we are not perfect because He will bring about transformation as we begin to desire what is right (note for example, the tax collector: Luke 18:14). We can also learn to accept others – Christians included – rather than write them off the minute they offend us, or don’t appear to be getting it right.

Sometimes it may take more strength and love to forgive a fellow-Christian than it does someone we don’t know. This is often because people set such a high standard concerning how fellow brothers and sisters should live, and expect them to be like Jesus as soon as they are saved. We have received such amazing grace and mercy from God, and yet seem to find it so hard to extend to others at times. We judge others at the drop of a hat and often believe that when others get it wrong or speak out of turn they are deliberately doing it against us. In feeling uncomfortable when situations like this arise we often fail to see that we are not so much uncomfortable about the situation at hand, but because we are misreading the situation and judging it the wrong way.

Friendship constantly needs repairing because we are all on a journey, which will at times involve healing and wholeness that can be painful to go through. We all bring unnecessary baggage into our walk with the Lord and at times it is going to reveal its presence and need dealing with. We need to be there for each other, as Christ is there for us, and we need to be willing to make sacrifices for each other, because this is the way of Christ.

Every so often I find an item in an old junk shop that I think will look absolutely amazing in our house. On one occasion I was keen to show Ann (my wife) an old mirror I’d seen in a shop. Ann’s reaction was to say, “You don’t really like that do you?” followed quite quickly by, “It’s Ok if you want it,” which, after many years of marriage, I knew to mean, “I really don’t like this.” And so I did not buy the mirror. However, this does not mean that either Ann or I like everything we have in our house, because we choose to meet in the middle. There are some things Ann prefers, like a pewter fairy on our sideboard, and some things I prefer like a bronze sculpture of a monkey holding a human skull, titled “Darwin’s Enigma’.

Our marriage is not about what is Ann’s or what is mine; it is about what is ours, and about being a couple. In living this way our individuality is not squashed, but heightened and empowered as we care for one another, ‘Ours’ is always associated with making sacrifices because we don’t have to promote self in any way and can instead reach out in love.

Overwhelming Compassion and Mercy

At Mount Carmel we find Elijah (1 Kings 18:18-24), calling to account those who had compromised the life and freedom given to them by their Heavenly Father. Through Elijah God offered forgiveness and reconciliation to His rebellious people, and in grace and mercy revealed what He was like to those who should have known better.

“Throughout the Bible we see different manifestations of God…such as the fire that gives warmth, the cloud that gives shade, the ox that teaches, the bird that protects its young, the lord who brings life and the shepherd that protects the flock. These all work together in harmony to protect and provide for his people.

J. Benner in, His Name is One. Page 112.

In the opening section in Isaiah we find the words of a Father who, inspite of   His power and glory, and the failings of the nation, is still willing to reason with His people (Isaiah 1:18). This reasoning was not some sort of desperate plea-bargaining; it was a challenge to them to use their minds. God was going to discipline His people because He loved them, and yet He also spoke of the Messiah (Isaiah 53), who would offer His life in man’s place. This is the compassion and loving-kindness of God, yet without compromise to holiness in any way.

“Israel knew that the survival of their relationship with the Lord depended totally on his faithfulness and loyalty to his own character and promises, not on their own success in keeping the law.”                                            O.T. Ethics p 29.

The compassion and love of our Father is seen in many of the laws He called Israel to live by. For example, God tells His people not to offend, hurt, neglect, criticise, or mock widows, orphans, the blind and the deaf (Ex 22:21ff; Lev 19:14). God cares for His people.

“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are

formed, he remembers that we are dust.” Ps 103:13-14

In the New Testament, we see the love and compassion of God throughout the ministry of Christ and work of the Holy Spirit. For example, compassion and love are seen in the words of Jesus to a crowd that contained many who were against Him. Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23: 37). Jesus continually revealed the compassion and love of God for wayward people.

“Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.”

H.W. Beecher, 19^th Century Social Reformer and abolitionist.

Compassion speaks of a deep desire within to reach out with all that one is in order to provide help for another. Scripturally it speaks of the passion of the real shepherd to nurture and protect people, it speaks of real life seeking to surround, protect and nurture life, like the womb from which life is birthed.

For example, Jesus had compassion for two blind men whom the crowd saw as little more than inconveniences (Mat 20:29-34). He had compassion for a leper and touched and healed him (Mark 1:40-42). Jesus had compassion for crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd, and He taught (Mk 6:34) and fed them (Mat 15:32). In all that He said and did we see the compassion and love of God in action.

“The whole essence of Jesus’ life is that in him we see clearly displayed the attitude of God to men…It was not an attitude of stern, severe, austere justice; not an attitude of continual demand. It was an attitude of perfect love, of a heart yearning with love and eager to forgive.”

Dr. Barclay in, ‘An Alphabet of Barclay’, p88.

Because of who God is, and what He has done we are able to approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need (Heb 4:16)

“As freely as the firmament embraces the world, or the sun pours forth impartially its beams, so mercy must encircle both friend and foe.”

Fredrich Shiller

Mercy is often regarded as the chief of passions, and speaks of showing grace, beauty and kindness to the transgressor, instead of giving out what he or she really deserves. Mercy speaks of bowing the head to look at the plight of another, such as an enemy. It speaks of lifting up those who deserve nothing, and bringing them into a place of reconciliation, freedom and protection. We are recipients of this mercy because of Jesus.

In the Ancient Near East, a written agreement (certificate) would acknowledge a debt to be paid. Jesus wiped this debt out for us when we accepted Him as Lord and Saviour. Through Christ God accepts us; we are brought near and are able to exercise freedom by the power of the Holy Spirit. God wants to be our friend.

Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert died at the same time as her close friend, Mrs Tullock, lost her husband. Unexpectedly Queen Victoria called whilst Mrs Tullock was resting. As she attempted to rise, the Queen said to her “My dear, don’t rise. I am not coming to you today as a queen to a subject, but as one woman to another who has lost her husband.” She put herself in her friend’s place. This is what Jesus did for us; He put Himself in our place. This is His love, mercy, compassion and grace towards us. Back to our lawyer: a lawyer who felt he had to test Jesus and prove himself.

In the film, ‘Lions for Lambs’, two university students, inspired by their professor, decide to do something meaningful with their lives. Both students were brought up in the Bronx and lived in a culture of broken families, absent fathers, gang warfare and drugs. In short, their country had offered them little by way of support, yet both students leave university, join the army, and fight for their country in Afghanistan. At a later stage in the film the Professor (Dr Malley) who’d taught them before they went off to war, talks with student who’d come from a wealthy and privileged background. What had this student done with all he had been given? This student did little more than pick holes in society, whilst partying around as much as possible. In his conversations with the young man, Dr Malley’ encourages him to think.

The fruit in the lives of the two students who’d received so little from their country is that they wanted to give something back, whilst the fruit in the life of this rich and privileged student appears to be that the world was one big playground, everyone else was wrong and life owed him a living.

In our reading we come across a religious lawyer who had received so much yet was still caught up in self. Elsewhere in scripture we read of people like the widow who gave two copper coins, despite having so little (Luke 21:1-4).

What do we do with the life we have been given? Do we just look after ourselves and write off everyone else – or do we reach out to others?

In Luke 10:25 we read that the expert in Mosaic Law wanted to test Jesus and also to justify himself (v29).  Despite his privileged position and all that he would have learnt about God’s grace, the lawyer was still interested in promoting his own image. In this we see that although the lawyer knew something of the Law, he did not see the real heart of God in the Law. So how does Jesus deal with the situation?

The lawyer had asked Jesus who his neighbour was, and Jesus, in reply, shows the man what genuine love and mercy is like and that the lawyer is asking the wrong question.

In Jewish thinking the term  ‘neighbour’ (rea) generally referred to all people apart from Samaritans or Gentiles. Yet the right response to the mercy, grace and loving-kindness of God is to have the same attitude of heart towards all God has made. The Lawyer was not seeing this, so Jesus tells him a parable.

The parable

Jesus painted a picture in the minds of his hearers and told them a parable centred on a well-known trouble spot: the 17- mile road, from Jerusalem to Jericho, known by many as, ‘the way of blood’. Because of the fear of attack along this road, many travellers would wait at the city gate in order to get news from others who were coming in from their journey. Many would also wait to travel in a group for safety, and would know who’d gone on ahead of them. Some days would have been good for travel, and others would not.

In Jesus’ parable a man travels along the road, and is attacked, beaten unconscious, stripped, and left at the point of death. In a society that recognised which community you came from by your way of dress or the way you spoke, this man was now totally unrecognisable. He could be someone from your own district, or from a people group regarded as your enemy.

The first person arriving at the scene of the crime is a Priest, who would have been travelling home after ministering at the temple. Everything this Priest had been involved in at the Temple would have clearly spoken of God’s undeserved grace, mercy and loving-kindness. Yet the priest does nothing for the man who had been attacked. Perhaps it was just too inconvenient for him to bother, and if the man were already dead, the priest would be defiled and have to go back into Jerusalem and stand with others until cleansed.

Despite all the priest would have known about God, he revealed that he was more caught up with his own image and needs than anything else, and so he went on the other side of the road and ignored the suffering man.

Although it seems as if the priest did nothing for the victim, in reality he did. The priest contributed to the situation in allowing unnecessary suffering to continue. The way we treat others clearly reveals our attitude to God.

The second person in the parable is a Levite who, according to local custom, would probably know that a Priest had gone ahead of him to Jericho.  This Levite would not have had so much to lose as the Priest, yet is also caught up with self. He had no way of knowing who the man was, and if the Priest hadn’t bothered, then why should he?

It has often been said that all it takes for evil to grow is for good men to do nothing. The Levite contributed to the beaten man’s suffering in doing absolutely nothing.

The third person in Jesus parable is a Samaritan, whose appearance in the story would have been a surprise to those who were used to looking down on such people. When one individual or community looks down on another it can then becomes easier to mock, ridicule or gossip about them. Think, for example, about how some football fans talk about other teams!

The Samaritans were regarded as heretics who’d defiled the faith, and so they were ostracised and publicly cursed in the Synagogues. A person who has continually been exposed to such treatment, could easily become introverted and have no interest whatsoever in those around them. Statistically the unrecognisable man was probably not a Samaritan. Despite this, and the possible danger of falling into a trap, the Samaritan stops to help the man. In the Samaritan’s actions we see a man who knew God, and whose identity was not primarily taken up in who he was and what he was or was not going to do.

Out of great compassion and concern the Samaritan bandages the victims wounds and puts the man on his donkey. He then takes him to a place of safety and recuperation and pays for all the man needed. He also tells the innkeeper he would pay more on his return, and in doing so insured that the beaten man would not be turned out onto the streets, the minute his back was turned. In this we see unconditional love from a man (Samaritan) who would have been marginalised, trivialised and rejected by many. In a small way this speaks of God’s love for us all.

“At the end of the day, love and compassion will win.”

Terry Waite

Through our actions, the actions of others, or pressure society places on us, many of us lose sight of who we really are, and may even become unrecognisable to those who used to know us. Now look at the One who stood talking to the Lawyer.

Jesus was marginalised in the thinking of many, and ridiculed by others. He was misunderstood and perceived as a threat by the authority of the day, and yet still He came. In Jesus, God reaches out to a rebellious and in many ways unrecognisable world with the offer of life and fellowship. In a sense the unheard of is happening: the Holy One of Israel has come with the offer of grace and mercy instead of condemnation and judgement. This is our God.

The right question

Robbers beat up the unknown victim in Jesus’ parable, yet you or I can beat self up without the help of anybody else. How do we do this? We do this as we try and cope with life in our own strength alone

In many ways most of us were nothing like what we should have been before coming to Christ. Yet still Christ came to us and at this very moment we   continue to find ourselves accepted by God through the work of His Son.

In Jesus we find that we don’t have to live with an image, prop ourselves up, hide behind a mask or put up barriers of self-protection. We are loved, and knowing and growing in this love is the answer to all our problems and everything that life throws at us. We are loved.

In a recent Times Newspaper a father wrote about his eight year old boy who was born with Down’s syndrome. In the article he posed the question, “What was his son for?”  In seeing the impact his young son had on others, and especially the school he attended, he went on to point out that maybe his son’s function is to be loved and to love in return, and perhaps this is everybody’s ultimate function.

In some respects the question, “who is my neighbour?” was really the wrong question; but why? Because the person who has received God’s love and has grown in His grace does not make a division in his or her mind concerning whom they are going to help or not help.

As recipients of God’s great love and mercy, we are called to reach out to all people with the love of God. We should do this knowing that we are just as guilty of sin as others and cannot hate them for their sin. We are to love the sinner and hate the sin and not write off the whole person.

“God knows our feelings by virtue of personal experience. He knows because, incarnate in Jesus Christ, He underwent the trials and ordeals and sufferings through which we are passing… He knows the frailty of our flesh…He knows how we feel, and He responds to our feelings with fathomless empathy.”

Dr V. Grounds in, Emotional Problems and the Gospel, p 46-47.

As believers we need to be caught up with all that God has done, is doing, and wants to do. There is no need to be caught up with my own identity that I have built for myself in order to cope with life. Neither should I carry on wearing the labels that others have used to define, or judge me. I need to be rooted and established in all that the Lord has done. I am accepted. I am loved. I am able to grow into maturity and freedom and reach out to help others, who struggle and get it wrong at times, just like me.

Loving God is not just an emotional response to Jesus. It is about taking seriously the responsibility we have to learn from His work and to live out His teaching in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Be Blessed.

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