Jesus

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The Rape of Christ


We are only prepared to receive and comprehend the grace of God when we have understood His infinite holiness and our incredible sinfulness. ~James MacDonald

I have been attempting for months to help someone understand just what the big deal is about our sin, and sexual sin in particular. I was struggling to bring to light just how badly our sin breaks the heart of God, and 1 Corinthians 6:5-20 is the passage I ended up returning to several times.

This passage gives us a clear explanation of the connection found in mind, body and soul specifically; each is intricately involved in the health and welfare of the other. Sins actively committed in our body impact our souls and minds; thoughts lead to actions which lead to spiritual disconnect from the Father. Spiritual brokenness can cause mental and physical side effects like depression, anger, apathy, even physical pain.

So, according to this passage, our physical actions impact us mentally and spiritually as well. We use our bodies and train our minds to respond a certain way, leading to addictive behavior. Most people today watch enough Dr. Phil to understand the mind/body connection.

But what about the spiritual aspect of sin? How does that impact us? How does our sin impact our relationship with the Triune God? According to this passage, our sin effects Christ intimately and directly. He tells us that, at the time of salvation, we become joined in one Spirit with Christ. He is a part of us, we are a part of Him. This is why the marriage relationship is a picture of our relationship with Christ; separate beings, joined together to become one while still remaining unique beings. One of the greatest mysteries of how we as spiritual beings function.

Follow this logic for a moment; as believers, we are joined to Jesus, being one in Spirit. He is with us and a part of us, present and actively involved in all that we think, say and do. That’s a pretty convicting thought.

But Paul then immediately uses an extreme illustration to make his point; he asks who in his right mind would ask Jesus to sleep with a prostitute? The answer to that rhetorical question is, “No one!” Jesus was tempted in every way, yet without sin. Jesus doesn’t want to engage in illicit sexual activity; his one goal is to glorify His Father in Heaven in mind, body and spirit.

So, following Paul’s graphic illustration, what are we doing when, as believers, we force Jesus, with whom we are joined in one Spirit, to join us in immoral sexual behavior? We are essentially raping Jesus. We are forcing him to participate in sexual activity He wholeheartedly desires to avoid because it brings no glory to the Father in Heaven.

Some statics claim that by the end of college (or age 22) as many as 20% of all women have been at least convinced to participate in a sex act she would otherwise have avoided. Ask any woman who’s been in that situation, and she will tell you how it made her feel. Dirty. Shameful. Used. Broken. Brokenhearted.

Sometimes it’s difficult as believers to understand how our sin breaks the heart of God. In following Paul’s logic in this passage, it should be abundantly clear; to engage in immoral sexual activity is to force Jesus to engage in sexual activity against His will. Our selfish momentary pleasure is equal to the rape of Christ.

Looking at it from that point of view, how do you think our sin breaks the heart of God? How would your heart break knowing that a loved one had been raped, abused, molested? How did you feel if it’s happened to you? What steps do you take to protect yourself from being in a situation in which those things could happen? How do you teach and train the young boys and girls in your life to avoid those situations? Shouldn’t we do the same for Christ?

If we are one in Spirit with Him, shouldn’t we live our lives in such a way that we do everything within our power to keep Him from being involved in activities He desperately wants to avoid?

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The Thin Line


It’s an age old problem. Those we love the most, have known the longest, trusted with the most of ourselves, are the ones that have the potential to hurt us the most. This is exactly why so many people walk around with a wall around their hearts, keeping people at arm’s length to prevent potential heart break. The benefits of love are simply not worth the risk of hurt and rejection.

Prevention of pain explains a lot in ministry and life in general. Ministry leaders don’t stay places long because it hurts less when those you serve reject you or betray you if you haven’t known them long and you don’t have much invested in them. Marriages are short term agreements instead of lifetime covenants because it’s easier to find someone else than to work through the hurt caused by someone who knows you deeply. We are connected in more social networking ways than ever before in the history of humanity, but we “connect” through the barrier of technology. There is a very thin line between love and hate because great hate is usually only generated by a betrayal of great love. Some people learn this and decide it’s not worth the risk.

I was reminded of this today when my feelings were bruised in a ministry situation by someone I have known for a long time. My first thought was, “That wouldn’t have bothered me so bad if I weren’t at my home church and it hadn’t been someone who knows me.” Knowing and being known opens us up to hurt. And no one wants to be hurt. As humans, our favorite idol is our own pleasure and happiness, and we will often decrease our own happiness to decrease our risk for pain.

But then I thought about Jesus, the One who Scripture claims knows all of our pain and temptation yet never sinned. I thought about how painful it must have been for Him to be betrayed by Judas, one of his disciples, someone He had poured Himself into for three years. Three years is a long term relationship in our time, and they had been together almost constantly in those three years. They shared life together. They knew one another and were known by one another. Three years worth of betrayal were felt in that kiss in the garden.

But even more than that, how much did it hurt for Him to have been rejected by His chosen people? Jesus had known and had been known by His people since the time of Abraham. For eternity, before the foundation of the world, Jesus knew His creation, He knit them together one at a time in their mother’s wombs. He revealed himself in creation; day after day for thousands of years, He put himself out there, opened himself up to the risk of rejection.

Then He came to earth and was rejected. Rejected by His chosen people. Rejected by the very creation into which He had poured His own Image. Rejected by His physical family, who declared Him to be crazy and warned towns to steer clear of Him. Rejected by His spiritual family in the Temple, by those who knew the most about Him but really didn’t know Him at all. He was literally rejected to death.

Jesus knew the thin line between love and hate, but He determined that his hate of sin and separation from His creation outweighed his love for himself and his own happiness. His love for His Bride and His Father outweighed His hate for His own pain and suffering.

So when we face the tough times in relationships, those times when we are hurt, rejected, betrayed, how do we handle it? Do we run away, protecting ourselves and our hearts, or do we remember that Jesus stuck with it for the long haul? When our hearts are breaking, do we remember that Jesus poured Himself into relationships for centuries and was rejected, yet still stuck with it?

When we have times that we feel like no one understands the pain we feel, remember that Jesus invested more time in relationships than any of us, ALL of time, and experienced an equal amount of heartbreak.

He knows what heartbreak feels like and He wants to heal yours.

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All Alone?


It’s not often that I go looking for inspiration in 90’s Christian rap music. Ok, I don’t think it’s ever actually happened. But when you put the iPod on shuffle, you just never know what’s going fill your ears. This is what I got this morning from GRITS:

A servant of God must stand so…so very much alone that he never realizes he is alone. In the early stages of Christian life disappointments will come, people who used to be lights will flicker out, and those who used to stand with us will turn away. We have to get so used to it that we will not even realize we are standing alone. Paul said, “No one stood with me, but all forsook me…but the Lord stood with me and strengthened me.” We must build our faith, not on fading lights, but on the light that never fails. When important individuals go away we are sad until we see that they are meant to go. ‘Til there’s only one thing left for us to do: to look at the face of God for ourselves.

It’s from their 1999 album Grammatical Revolution. And it got me thinking. What do we do when we get to those points in life in which it feels like we have been completely abandoned?

Sounds like the Apostle Paul knew what that was like. Not too many people are willing to stick around when their ministry’s leader is in jail.

Paul understood abandonment.

Jesus knew what abandonment was like. He was abandoned on the cross, bearing the burden of our sin. Not too many people are willing to stick around when their leader is being executed.

Jesus understood abandonment.

There are times when we are abandoned by all the people we know. Whether by choice or by circumstance, we find that those we tend to lean on in hard times are unavailable. When we physically lean and the thing we expect to be there is not, gravity tends to drag us to the ground. The same thing can happen if we rely on people, things, habits, places to catch our fall in hard times.

That’s what I love about the reminder in that last line of “Count Bass D (A Reading From)”: …we are sad until we see that they are meant to go. ‘Til there’s only one thing left for us to do: to look at the face of God for ourselves.

Often when we look for support, encouragement, backup in the battle, we look to our right and to our left only. We want our fellow soldiers by our side, and when we find them missing, we are confused, hurt.

But in those times, we must remember the promise given in Isaiah 52:12: For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

We are never alone. It may seem that we are fighting the battle alone because we feel we have little or no human support. But we have a God outside of time that goes before us, straightening and smoothing our path while still standing behind us, guarding our back in the heat of battle.

David Crowder Band sings “Only You”, a song written from the perspective of realizing and appreciating the experience of learning that He is all we need in the heat of battle:

Take my heart, I lay it down
At the feet of You who’s crowned
And take my life, I’m letting go
I lift it up, to You who’s throned

Chorus
And I will worship you, Lord
Only You, Lord
And I will bow down before You
Only You, Lord

Take my fret, take my fear
All I have I’m leaving here
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams
Be all my delights, be my everything

And it’s just You and me here now
Only You and me here now

You should see the view
When it’s only You

Have you ever seen the view, when it’s just you and the Lord? Or do you crowd your view with people, places, things? God has recently stripped some false supports from my life and shown me that, while painful, the result is beautiful– the opportunity to see Him and only Him.

Try it sometime; the view is spectacular.

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Salvation: What’s in it for me?


I read the quote in the book Making Sense of the New Testament by Craig Blomberg:

“Simply professing to follow Jesus is inadequate, especially if one does so merely for personal gain. The path of true discipleship is the road to the cross– death to self, deinal of the ‘triumphalism’ that perverts the Gospel into a formula for worldly success and prestige, and the willingness to lay down one’s life for Christ should that prove necessary, even if it means an ignominousand agonizing death.”

Does this mean that if you profess Christ just because you don’t like the idea of going to hell that you have missed the point of the Gospel? Is escaping Hell a reason of mere personal gain and not one that acknowledges He is worthy of our service and worship regardless of what we get in return?

If we preach a Gospel that says, “Believe in Jesus so you won’t go to Hell,” are we selling the Gosepl short? Why do we seek the forgiveness and love of the Savior? Is it because we want something from Him, or is it because we recognize His holiness and our total inability to survive apart from Him?

I will chew on this observation for several days as I re-evaluate how I share the Gospel and how I frame God’s good gift of salvation– How do you explain the gift of salvation God has provided for us without making it about us?

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God, Gold, and Glory


People keep asking me what my problem is with the current administration. What’s wrong with wanting everyone to have health care? What’s wrong with the President encouraging students to stay in school? Nothing. People should have health care. Students should stay in school and excel to the best of their ability. My problem is not with the ends desired by the administration; my problem is the means by which the administration intends to achieve them.

See, I have a very different worldview when compared to most of the world. I firmly believe in the separation of church and state. Religion and politics should never mix. When those two things get together, events like the Crusades and the Holocaust and the Salem witch trials and British Civil Wars and segregation in the South occur.

However, I also firmly believe that my faith is the lens through which I should view the entire world, politics included. Religion brings to government more dogma and a competing legal code, and two legal codes will rarely co-exist in friendly terms. But faith will govern how I select who will represent me in the government and how I view things like history, politics, and culture. Faith and religion are not synonymous. I have a real problem with a government that is permitted to grow larger and larger so that it can accomplish the work mandated by God to be done by His people. I also have a real problem with God’s people allowing it to occur because we are too busy being religious to be faithful.

As a Christian, I take the Word of God very seriously. I believe that while it is not exhaustive in its information, it is 100% true in the areas in which it makes comments and observations, especially about human nature. Who, after all, is better qualified to comment on the tendencies of the creation than the Creator?

And the Creator has lots to say about how and where we spend our money and how we should care for one another. If believers all gave just their tithes, not even offerings above and beyond the 10% tithe, I’m certain we would be able to eradicate issues like poverty and hunger and lack of education in our own country and beyond. Why do I believe that? Because in Scripture, God mandated that His people care for the widows and the orphans. He gave instructions for how to care for those who could not care for themselves like the sick and infirmed. He gave instructions for how to treat those who refused to provide for their families, and he also gave instructions for how His people should care for those who had been abandoned. And our God does not give a command without also providing a way for us to be obedient.

By our actions, most of us show that we believe that we understand finances and the economy better than God, so we don’t give Him all that He requests of us. Last time I checked, the government takes a lot more than 10% of each of my paychecks. Probably would have worked out better for us in the long run if we had just given God what He asked of us.

My “problem” with the current issue about the President addressing school children is that it’s not the government’s responsibility to educate the next generation any more than it is the responsibility of the government to care for those who cannot care for themselves. God did not ordain the government as the foundational institution of society; He ordained the family to fulfill that role. My problem is not with the government stepping in and meeting a need; my problem is with the church and the family that for too long allowed the need to go unmet.

There are many “what about” illustrations that could be proposed, and there is one consistent biblical solution: we each work hard and to the best of our ability. When that occurs, some do better than others financially and those that are better off give out of their abundance to care for those who are in need.

But, you say, that sounds like communism. The issue is that you cannot legislate a charitable heart. When believers work as unto the Lord and not men, needs are met lovingly and graciously. When we have been given a gift as great as salvation, meeting physical needs should be a no brainer.

So here is my problem: the church wants to switch places with the world. We come to church and demand life AND liberty AND happiness while expecting the government to care for our poor and educate our children. Our society is broken; that is evident to all with eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear. But the world’s solution and the church’s solution should be very different.

I will not place my faith in any man made system of government to care for my family and meet my needs. My proposed solution involves not a change in the majority party of Congress, but a change in the hearts of believers. James gives this illustration of faith in action in his letter in the New Testament: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” This is the example James uses of speaking of faith without acting in faith. When believers begin looking out for themselves instead of looking out for one another, we quit walking in faith. It is easier to place our faith in a visible government that we can see and hear than it is to place our faith in the God of the universe that owns it all to begin with.

I am by no means proposing a theocracy. That returns us to a mixing of church and state that has proven to always be disastrous. Changes of heart cannot be legislated from the capital. What I am proposing is what God proposed to begin with; that His people care for those less fortunate than they and show the love of Christ first to one another and than to the world around us. If we would simply do those two things, there would be no need for welfare and universal health care and daytime speeches on the benefits of education.

See, I don’t have a problem with President Obama. It doesn’t surprise me when politicians behave like politicians. It grieves my heart when the church refuses to behave like the church.