Monday, May 21, 2007

A while back I had to go to this multi-cultural sensitivity panel for my job, it was actually a lot better than I had expected. Anyway, one of the guys, the Hmong representative, made a great analogy regarding schools. He said something to the tune of back in the day, schools (and teachers in particular) operated much like an ancient king or kingdom, "I am king, you come to me, you fear me!" But now that is changing, schools and teachers have to be more sensitive to the needs of students, especially in our ever-changing world. I love that analogy!


I also felt that it could be related to the Church over the last two thousand years. In the past, especially in your more orthodox churches, the priests or whomever was at the top acted much like the King, "I am king, you come to me, you fear me!" and they even presented God in this light. But more and more those layers are breaking down, in many circles this hierarchical leadership in the church is being outed for the mockery they have become. Furthermore, more and more literature is being published that is showing God for the loving, merciful, forgiving, just God that He is, not this big bad angry father up in the sky just waiting to get you. Thanks be to God for that!
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good evening my brotha!

Point well taken (REALLY!), and I think I see where you’re coming from on the last point, but what about the INCREDIBLE imbalance this has brought about and is bring about in this “post-evangelical age”? We have an entire generation of non-Christians and false converts who outright oppose the Gospel either explicitly or implicitly because their god – who doesn’t exist – is a god of love and grace and mercy who would never judge anyone or send anyone to hell. Their god – the god of far to many in “evangelical” “churches” – is the beloved “man upstairs” who just wants us to be nice.

Now, no doubt our Triune Creator is loving, grace-filled, merciful, forgiving, and just. But He is also holy and righteous and wrathful. And as Charles Spurgeon once said, “People will never accept grace [much less understand it or appreciate it] until they tremble before a just and holy Law.” Contrast the god of many “evangelicals” with the God who has proclaimed a death sentence upon all of humanity who has broken His Law. We can’t have grace, we can’t even understand grace, until we understand the Law. Until we understand that we are on death row. Until we understand that because of the multitude our sins we deserve eternal punishment and torment in hell. Then – and only then – can we fully grasp and appreciate and accept the grace and mercy of our Creator God who, out of His great love, humbled Himself and became a man and paid the penalty for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to. Amazing Grace indeed!

So I’m not at all ashamed of those great preachers of the past who preached righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come. The famous evangelist John Wesley once informed a young associate that he should “preach 90% Law and 10% grace.” WOW! That surely seems imbalanced!! But consider this illustration from Ray Comfort:

*** I’m a doctor; you’re a patient. You have a terminal disease. I have a cure, but it’s absolutely essential that you are totally committed to this cure; if you’re not 100 percent committed, it will not work. How am I going to handle it? Probably like this.

“Come in here. Sit down. I’ve some very serious news for you: you have a terminal disease.” I see you begin to shake. I think to myself, “Good. He’s beginning to see the seriousness of this situation.” I bring out charts; I bring out x-rays. I show you the poison seeping through your system. I speak to you for ten whole minutes about this terrible disease. How long, then, do you think I’m going to have to talk about the cure? Not long at all. When you’re sitting there trembling after ten minutes, I say, “By the way, here’s the cure.” You grab it and gulp it down. Your knowledge of the disease and its horrific consequence has made you desire the cure.

You see, before we were Christians, we had as much desire for righteousness as a four-year-old boy has for the word “bath.” What’s the point? Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” How many non-Christians do you know who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness? The Bible says, “There is NONE who seek after God” (Romans 3:11). It says they love the darkness, they hate the light; neither will they come to the light least there deeds be exposed (John 3: 19 – 20). The only thing they drink in is iniquity like water (Job 15:16). But when we are confronted with the spiritual nature of God’s Law and understood that God requires truth in the inward parts (Ps. 51:6), that He sees out thought-life and considered lust to be the same as adultery, hatred the same as murder, we can began to understand reality. We can see we’re condemned. And then we’ll ask what we have to do to be made right? Then we begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness. The Law puts salt on our tongue. It’s a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. ***

It does seem paradoxical, but the Bible’s claim that the Law makes grace abound is so true! John Newton, the former-slaver trader who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace,” said back in his day that a wrong understanding of the harmony between God’s Law and God’s grace would produce error on the left and the right hand. Yes, there have been errors on the left. But today the error’s on the right are just as wrong, just as unbiblical, and just as deadly and condemning in light on eternity. People will never – NEVER – understand, appreciate, and accept the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ until the reality and consequences of their sin is explicitly laid out through the use of God’s just and holy Law.

Anyway, this rant has as usual gotten entirely too long. Something to think about.

God bless bro!

9:07 PM

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