An intelligent fourth-grader.

To pray for your enemies, to worry about the poor when you have worries enough of your own, to start becoming yourself fully by giving of yourself prodigally to whoever needs you, to love your neighbors when an intelligent fourth-grader could tell you that the way to get ahead in the world is to beat your neighbors to the draw every chance you get-that was what this God asked, Paul wrote. 

That was who this God was. That was who Jesus was. Paul is passionate in his assertion, of course, that in the long run it is such worldly wisdom as the intelligent fourth-grader's that is foolish and the sublime foolishness of God that is ultimately wise.

- Frederick Buechner

Humble and Bold. Bold and Humble.

 And here is the source of true kindness. The salvation of Jesus humbles us profoundly – we are so lost that he had to die for us. But it exalts and assures us mightily — we are so valued that he was glad to die for us. Because we are sinners totally accepted by grace, we have both the humility and the boldness necessary to serve others for their sake, not ours.
       — Tim Keller

It is Finished.

“We can put it this way–the man who has faith is the man who is no longer looking at himself and no longer looking to himself. He no longer looks at anything he once was. He does not look at what he is now. He does not even look at what he hopes to be as the result of his own efforts. He looks entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work, and rests on that alone. He stops saying, ‘Ah yes, I used to commit terrible sins but now I have done this and that.’ If he goes on saying that, he has not got faith. Faith speaks in an entirely different manner and makes a man say, ‘Yes I have sinned grievously, I have lived a life of sin, yet I know that I am a child of God because I am not resting on any righteousness of my own; my righteousness is in Jesus Christ and God has put that to my account.’”  
     -----D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Mercy and Grace

Our assurance, our glory, and the sole anchor of our salvation are that Christ the Son of God is ours, and we in turn are in him sons of God and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, called to the hope of eternal blessedness by God’s grace, not by our worth.

— John Calvin

Driving a nice (but not too nice) car.

By Tullian Tchividjian at Liberate Blog:

In 1 John 5:3-4 John makes what seems, on the face of it, to be a ridiculous claim: the commands of God are not burdensome.

What? Has John not read the Old Testament, with its 613 commandments? Was he not there for the Sermon on the Mount, complete with Jesus’ proclamation that his followers are required to be perfect, just as their father in heaven is perfect? As if those laws weren’t burdensome enough, we could add all of the self-imposed Christian commandments, like the kinds of movies we allow ourselves to watch (maybe a swear word or two is okay, but nudity isn’t), the cars we drive (we like nice things as much as the next person, but we don’t want to be showy, do we?), or even the expressions on our faces (we want to be cheerful, to show people what a good life Christ has given us). We are burdened…perhaps more than anyone.

The idea that God’s commandments are not burdensome seems to diametrically oppose our experience: to us, they feel super burdensome.

And yet, we do have Jesus offer of an easy yoke and a lightened burden. He does promise rest. But how does that work? How do the obviously burdensome commandments of life become not burdensome? How is it that Jesus’ yoke is easy when he is the one asking us to be perfect?

The answer, though incredibly profound, is actually quite simple. Though the commandments are indeed burdensome, that burden has been laid on the shoulders of another. Jesus Christ, who demands that we be perfect, achieves perfection in our place. Jesus Christ, the culmination of the Old Testament story, fulfills the Old Testament laws. That same weight that threatens to break our backs actually did crush our savior. The weights that we bear every day are simply aftershocks of our human attempts to save ourselves. The weights we feel are a phantom; they’ve already been taken to the cross, carried up the Via Dolorosa on Christ’s back. We are free. We are, in Christ, unburdened.
This is true today, and every day.

Unbiblical expectations of what Christian growth should look like.

"Perhaps our greatest problem is not the reality of our sin, but our unbiblical expectations of what Christian growth should look like. What if growing in grace is more about humility, dependence, and exalting Christ than it is about defeating sin. … It is a radical and almost frightening thought to see that God is actually as much at work in our worst moments of sin and defeat as he is in our best moments of shining obedience.”

----Barbara Duguid, Extravagant Grace

Slave or Free?

“According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.” 

 

 – G.K. Chesterton

We would be free but on our own.

From Tim Keller's Commentary on Romans:

Yet it is very easy and common to think of our salvation only in terms of the first and not the second, only as the transfer off of our sins, but not as the transfer on of his rights and privileges. 

We tend to think only that Christ has pardoned us and removed our legal liability. When we do that, we are really only “half-saved by grace.” We can get pardon, but now we have to live a good life to earn and maintain God’s favor and rewards.

But this text shows us that not only did Christ remove the curse we deserved, but he also gives us the blessing he deserved. God’s honor and reward is just as secure and guaranteed as our pardon. To use another image. Jesus’ salvation is not just like receiving a pardon and release from death row and prison. Then we’d be free, but on our own. Jesus has also put on us the Congressional Medal of Honor. We are received and welcomed as heroes, as if we had accomplished extraordinary deeds.

Unless we remember this we will be anxious and even despairing when we sin or fail. We think our slate has been wiped clean, but now God’s opinion and acceptance of us is based on our record. That is not the case. When a son becomes heir, that inheritance is guaranteed. It is not a prize to be won. It is his. So is our salvation.

Sheep or Goat

Rob Bell in his book, "What We Talk About When We Talk About God"

“Jesus told a story about a king who was making decisions about his subjects, separating people "as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." The sheep, we learn, are the ones who brought the king food when he was hungry and water when he was thirsty and clothes when he was naked and looked after him when he was sick and visited him when he was in prison.

The sheep are confused when they learn of their good standing with the king.

"Uhhhhhhh, king?" they protest. "When were you hungry or thirsty or naked or lonely or sick? We've never seen that!" They ask because of course they understand the king to be quite wealthy, not lacking in basic necessities like food, clothing, and friends.

He responds, "Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

The king here makes the astounding claim that he is somehow present with and standing in solidarity with all of them, and that love and care and compassion shown to others is love for him.

Jesus tells stories like this one often, stories that speak to the divine presence in every single one of our interactions—a unity, power, and love present in all things, hidden right here in plain sight.

This story Jesus told raises the haunting question: What are we missing? Is there an entire world, right here within this one, as close as our breath, but we aren't seeing it because we're moving too fast, we're separated from the source, cut off from the depths, our eyes not as open as they could be?

Jesus comes to help us see things as they truly are, moving forward, with greater and greater connectivity, higher and higher levels of hierarchy leading to holism beyond even us as all matter is permeated by the redeeming energy and power of God.

The first Christians had a way of talking about this massive movement, bigger than any one of us, that's sweeping across human history: they wrote that God is in the process of moving everything forward so that God will be over all and through all and in all, and in another passage in the Bible it's written that God does what God does so that God may be all in all.

Punishment never has the power that forgiveness has.

Steve Brown tells a story that provokes thought on the subject of losing and finding:

The woman was washing dishes in the kitchen sink one day after the children had left for school. She looked at a particular plate. She stared at it a long time and asked herself over and over again, “How many times have I washed this plate? How many times have I dried it? How many times will I wash it and dry it again?” She then set down the plate, took off her apron, packed a few of her belongings and left.

That night she called home to tell her husband that she was all right, but that she just could not come home again. From time to time, over the next several weeks, she would call just to see how her husband and children were doing. But she would never tell them where she was, nor accede to the pleas from her family to return.

The husband hired a detective to search for her, and after picking up a few leads, the detective tracked her down. She was in another state, living in a small apartment over a coffee shop where she had a job as a waitress. Her husband set out immediately to bring her home. When he found the place she was staying, he knocked on the door of her upstairs apartment. She opened the door, saw him, and did not say a word.

She went into the bedroom, packed her belongings, and silently followed him out to the car. Then, in silence, he drove her home.

Several hours later when the two of them were alone in their bedroom he finally spoke, and he asked her, “Why didn’t you come home before? Over the phone I begged you to return. Why didn’t you come?”

The wife answered, “I heard your words, but it wasn’t until you came for me that I realized how much you cared and how important I was to you.”

Kent Hansen adds a nice commentary on the story:

This story is kind of upsetting, isn’t it? “What was she thinking to walk off like that?” We think that way, don’t we? The woman was selfish and irresponsible. She caused a lot of trouble and heartbreak to her husband and children. It’s tempting to want the husband to hold out on her and not just take her back until she has proven that she is really, really sorry.

What if the husband hadn’t gone to the woman, but instead divorced her and sued for sole custody of the children on the ground of abandonment. That would be his right, but that story line only goes so far before it dead ends. Punishment never has the power that forgiveness has. Have you ever wept for joy over witnessing a well-deserved punishment? Have you ever felt the thrill of getting in the last lick or last word in a conflict? Did that thrill last long? On the other hand, have you ever been amazed and moved by witnessing or receiving the mercy of forgiveness and restoration?

The power of the story is in the husband going to the trouble of finding the woman, going to her, and bringing her home. It is undeserved grace. We would pronounce judgment, but thanks be to God, “Mercy trumps judgment (Js 2:13). We are moved by the example of a love that doesn’t quit and restores to wholeness rather than destroys one who is alienated and lost and causing great hurt.

Oh, yes, the joy of the Lord is in the finding of what was lost and restoring it in love. That’s what Jesus came to do and the power of the Gospel is in forgiveness, not in the threat of punishment.

One day Jesus was standing in a group of tax collectors and sinners who came near to him to hear his words of grace. On the outside of the group were eavesdropping Pharisees and religious scholars who were outraged by Jesus’ indiscriminate kindness.  They grumbled, “This fellow welcomes sinners and sits down to eat in fellowship with them.” It was not a compliment and was far from the will of God (Acts 15:19; Rom 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9). Any group that depends for its identity on who it excludes rather than who it includes does not reflect the heart of God.

Jesus told the grumbling critics three stories in response to their judgmental complaint. He told them about a shepherd with a hundred sheep, who loses one of them. He leaves the flock in the wilderness and searches for the lost sheep. When he finds it, he picks it up and carries it home. He calls his friends and neighbors and says, “We have to have a party because I found my sheep that was lost.” Jesus told the critics, “One sinner returned home is more of a reason for God to be happy and throw a party than the fact that ninety-nine righteous persons stayed right where they are supposed to be.”

Jesus also told them about a son, who couldn’t wait for his father to die, claimed his inheritance and went out and wasted it. He came to his senses when he realized that he was hungry for the corn cobs he was feeding pigs, but he was really starving for his father’s love and graciousness. The lost boy stumbled his way home with a prepared speech to ask his father to give him a job. His father was waiting for him, ran to him, embraced him, clothed him, brought him inside and threw a big party. The father pleaded with the angry, judgmental elder son to come inside and enjoy the party too because his lost brother had been found and Jesus said it is the character and the compulsion of God to celebrate whenever that kind of thing happens.

Each of these stories has the same structure: Lostness, searching, finding and restoration.

This pattern is the DNA of the true Gospel of Christ. This God of ours, manifested in his Son, Jesus Christ, is a finder and a keeper. In his eyes there are no losers, only lost sheep and lost children who need to be restored to their rightful place at his side.

The stories of the lost sheep and the lost boy are the bookends. Right in the middle Jesus told them another story:

Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Lk 15:8-10).

The relief and joy when the coin was found led the woman to throw a party for her friends and neighbors. In this earthly scene, echoes of heaven’s excitement sounded and Jesus gained another way of explaining his mission. One lost sheep out of a hundred found again; a lost coin found; a lost son returning home to a heart-broken father–all of these were cause for celebration, Jesus said. In heaven they put on the music, fill the balloons, and break out the cake and ice-cream whenever a child of God, who has wandered off to loss and to shame, comes home again.
The sheep and the boy wandered off on their own stubborn and futile ways, but how did the coin become lost? We aren’t told.
 The story here is about finding what was lost and the God, who like the searching shepherd, like the woman diligent in seeking the return of what is precious to her, and like the heart-broken dad waiting for the return of his child, considers no loss acceptable. He sets aside every other consideration to make his search.

His sweep is comprehensive, his light is penetrating, and his search is careful, but this story isn’t about good housekeeping or loss control. You can search Luke 15 in vain for any indication that God wants to scrutinize and analyze how the loss occurred and how to prevent it from happening again before extending salvation.

No, the God revealed to us by Jesus is no conservative, stern nit-picker shouting, “I told you so” to the broken, defeated and shamed. God as the father described by Jesus in the parable of the two sons doesn’t even wait for his errant son to finish his groveling confession before hugging him to his chest and calling for the celebration to begin.

Jesus showed us that God forgives and forgets because he wants the largest possible guest list for his party. He risks all for love. The story of the lost coin is about the outbreak of joy in the heart of God when the lost is found. What gives God joy in his heart gives the Pharisees heartburn and therein lies the judgment. Think about it.

You cannot understand this story unless you put yourself in the role of the lost coin. God thinks of you with love and faithfulness for eternity. He doesn’t quit loving you. “God is love” (1 Jn 4:19). If God ever stopped thinking about you with love, he would cease to exist and that is not going to happen.

The Creator’s identity is revealed in his creatures. A parent’s identity is carried in the child. You bear the image of God and he delights in you (Gen 1:27). He says, “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? . . . My heart recoils within me; and my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hos 11:8).

Jesus speaks of us, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one” (Jn 10:28-30). “Greater than all else”– you and I are that important to our heavenly Father.

God is dismayed and heartbroken to lose you from that relationship and overjoyed to find you again. You matter to God. He cares what happens to you. He wants you back. He finds you and puts you back where you belong.

People are fond of saying, “There are two sides to every coin,” to caution us not to expect much. That’s not what God thinks about you. He’s no spoilsport, harsh taskmaster or implacable critic. He loves you. He is proud and happy to have you with him.

You can expect everything of your God because he won’t disappoint you for eternity. You have his word on this: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Ps 73:26). So enjoy the party! It’s meant for you!

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are they who find refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8).