“they’re acting like Christianity is an act of gratitude, an expression of joy!”
From Dr. Don Davis on “The Theology of Freedom” found at Mars Hill which you should check every week.
Monthly Archive for May, 2006
Grace is playing the silver-spoon corn plate.
Click here to play it in Quicktime.
Click here if the first link doesn’t work.
(0)Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else
you do is sin and you need to repent of it.
From p. 114, Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell
Galatians 5.14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Neutered International Version)
How is this: The big empty void of all of the ways of life you’ve been taught can be completely filled up in one word: LOVE.
I find myself griping about a lot of things, and realizing more and more the most complicated predicaments are healed with love. In Blue Like Jazz, Don Miller asks a guy how he can so thanklessly serve all of these people in a boarding house. The guy is always cleaning up after people, doing the unseen but necessary jobs, and is often just flat out taken advantage of. The guy says “If we get up in the morning and aren’t ready to die to ourselves, then we aren’t followers of Jesus.”
wow.
When I used to take martial arts classes (yeah, I know) I practiced and practiced with my Vegan buddy Keith Woods until our knuckles hurt from missed stick hits. We would swing those things so fast for so long there would be sawdust in the air on the quad. It was awesome. But then something started to happen to me. I no longer thought about how to move to block him. I didn’t have to think ‘ok, he swings a #3 at me, so I block with a #9.’ I would just do the #9. Then we began to have conversations while we were swinging our arms and sticks. Conversations about Veganism or British authors (clack clack clack clack) and which of our professors were dating each other (clack clack clack) and we would just jam with our fighting sticks. Defense and attack became a reflex that didn’t require us to think any more.
That’s when I quit.
It scared me to think that if someone came up to me to hurt me that I would-by reflex-break their arm or rip a finger off. (it was a class on weapon/weaponless defense, so it wasn’t about fighting to score points, but completely disabling your assailant as effortlessly as possible)
What if I practiced love and practiced dying to myself and practiced Jesus life through me enough that it was reflex? that by reflex I would not seek to serve the old god I served and instead served the LIVING GOD?
It comes by practice, patience, and a sparring partner to love, doesn’t it? Praise God, I’ve got 4.
There are 2 interesting verses in Galatians 4
Galatians 4.11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
Galatians 4.15 What has happened to all your joy? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me.
The Galatians received the news that Jesus died for our sins and now righteousness is given to us apart from our actions, but then after Paul left they came up with a bunch of rules that they should follow to be blessed.
Paul is totally confused, angry, and more in his letter to them. But these two things stick out to me.
When the Galatians pollute the good news by adding to it special feast days, seasons, activities, etc, Paul doesn’t get mad at himself as if he did a bad job or he failed at something. He says that he fears for THEM. He taught what he taught, he set them in motion, and he is confident that it was they themselves that got things off track. That’s bold. I think I’d be second-guessing myself and wondering where I went wrong.
Even better than that, verse 15 asks “what happened to all your joy?”¬† What happened to their blessedness, their happiness? Where else? their rules and regs sucked all the life out of them. Any time there are laws, no matter how grueling or depriving or difficult, ultimately they exist out of selfishness. Either to gain approval or gain piousness or gain something by doing something or not doing something. In the other direction they may exist because the law-keeper lives for being beat-down. How many times do I turn grace into a law to follow, simply because it’s easier for me to comprehend laws than grace!
So their joy in the grace of the gospel is lost on the hopeless pursuit of rules. How many churches/religious groups does that sound like? The Galatians first met Paul with such openness and charity that he said they would have plucked out their own eyes for him. Now they are so caught up with who is doing the right things and the wrong things that there is no room for hospitality or charity. And why should there be? What if they showed kindness to someone that wasn’t following all the rules? What if they invited someone to their fellowship that had a tattoo, or even smoked!
So let’s throw away our rules! Yes, throw them away! Put no stumbling blocks in front of people that may come to us, and let them come! Gouge out your judgmental eyes and give your guests a look at what grace and forgiveness looks like.
May God free us from our legalisms.
Exodus 20.7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
the KJV is actually a little closer
Exodus 20:7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
What if a woman, after being married to her husband and changing her name, continued to live alone or at home with her parents, and even went out to the bars and dated boys on thursday, friday, and saturday nights?
that is a better description of what it is to ‘misuse’ or ‘take’ the Lord’s name in vain. To Take on His name as a description of who you are, and then not act like it.
Word ‘take’ is also the same word for what the water did with Noah’s Ark, and what a man does with his bow and arrows.
But wait…
Here is also what God does:
Exodus 34.7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.
the word ‘forgiving’ right there, is the same word! It’s also what God does for us. He carried our sin, and we carry His name.
2 Timothy 1:7 (NIV)
For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
I’m looking at that, and I prayed it for God’s Church in the world, and I’m thinking about it.
I used to read this verse as an anthem to have self-control. Whenever I was tempted to do wrong, I would say, “God gave me a spirit of power, love, and self-control, so I have the self-control to resist doing this thing I want to do that’s wrong!” (spoken in a Walter Cronkite determined voice)
So now I’m looking at it, and I’m thinking, there is something wrong with the word SELF in there. I thought about it last night, and yesterday afternoon, but only this morning was I able to look it up.
check out this definition:  The editors of The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton University Press, 1989), in introducing Charmides, write
…the subject of the Charmides is, What is sophrosyne? — and that word cannot be translated by any one English word. The truth is that this quality, this sophrosyne, which to the Greeks was an ideal second to none in importance, is not among our ideals. We have lost the conception of it. Enough is said about it in Greek literature for us to be able to describe it in some fashion, but we cannot give it a name. It was the spirit behind the two great Delphic sayings, “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess.” Arrogance, insolent self-assertion, was the quality most despised by the Greeks. Sophrosyne was the exact opposite. It meant accepting the bounds which excellence lays down for human nature, restraining impulses to unrestricted freedom, to all excess, obeying the inner laws of harmony and proportion.
(I got that from a guy’s research on the web, but I’m not linking to his site, because he maligns this verse into some big long thing about what is wrong with the American Government. o-k)
Ok, so nothing in excess and know thyself. I think the NIV people did me wrong when they called this self-discipline. Self-discipline is something you work up within you. It’s something you have or you feel guilty because you don’t have. It’s something that I used to preach about how much people *should* have while I hated myself for not having it in the right places. Self-discipline. All I can think about is the verb “Muster” with the words self-discipline.
The roots of the word ‘muster’ is to show or a sign. That’s about right. Make a show of your self-discipline. You know why that goes together? Because self-discipline only counts for the show you make of yourself-it doesn’t count for God. God really doesn’t give a rip about your self-discipline. No wait, He does. He hates it. Your selfish deeds of pious religiosity are stank in His sight. (ok, now a little Leonard Sweet is coming out)
I see that I overlooked the first part of this verse and made the latter part a new law. God gave us this spirit. I don’t sit and pray and grunt to have the POWER to heal, and I don’t¬† grit my teeth to LOVE my enemies. I do it with joy. I do it with the joy of Jesus living His life out of me every day. I do it while asking Jesus to teach me, and asking this Spirit to remind me of all things while He lives it out in my life.
Here’s a freebie. the word ‘Give’ as in, what God did with this Spirit, is ‘didomi’ and it means to give.¬† But there is one place where it has a slightly different connotation. In Acts 19, there is a riot in Ephesus and there are a bunch of people at the stadium, and Paul wants to go to the theatre and preach to all of them about Christ. But it says that his friends didn’t want him to didomi himself at the theatre. That makes sense. Don’t give yourself to those people, because you’ll be handing yourself right over to death at the hands of a riotous mob! But the KJV doesn’t translate it as ‘give.’ they translate it as ADVENTURE!
GOD ADVENTURES in us a spirit of power, love, and sophronismos. He does it, not us!
so the big question of what about all of my sins I now commit:
they aren’t counted against me. I’m free from sin, not because I don’t sin, but because they don’t count.
they don’t count?
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.Romans 3:21-24 (NIV)
Righteousness from God, separate, apart from Law or the way of doing things or the prescription for life. Apart from my actions. Apart. so why tell people stuff to do?
Believe in Jesus.
I guess the thing to say is not that it didn’t count, because it did. When Jesus hung on the cross as the final lamb of God, the last needed sacrifice, it counted.
It counted huge.
Over a year ago I heard a guy say that you didn’t have to ask forgiveness when you sinned, but thank Jesus for the forgiveness He purchased. I think I’m starting to get that.
