October 20, 2014

The Life of Faith

During the past 30 or 40 years in our church, there has been a necessary emphasis on a believer’s personal relationship with God. The truth is, many of our parents and grandparents grew up without the assurance of their salvation in Christ. My grandmother died a few years ago; and she died worried, just as she lived worried. The same was true for many of your own grandparents. What a terrible experience.

So the message to our generation has been simple: God loves you. He loves you. He wants to live forever with you, just as human parents want to live forever with their own children. All we have to do is look to the Son of man lifted up (John 3:14, 15). He is worthy to save us.

Our personal one-on-one relationship with God, however, isn’t the totality of faith. Our faith has to be more than God and me on Monday morning. We are part of a much larger story that involves not only our entire planet but the entire watching universe.

On this battleground we know as earth, there exist two things: (1) the love of God for His children, and (2) the justice of God for the enemies of His children. In Scripture there is a specific term for the moment that God’s justice rolls forth: the day of the Lord. We see the day of the Lord on full display in such stories as the Flood and Sodom.

Though we didn’t live through these evil periods, we can relate to them. When you recently heard about the wicked rampage of ISIS through Iraq and Syria—beheading fathers and boys, enslaving mothers and daughters, chasing Christians into the mountains to die of thirst—how did you feel? Was your only emotion Oh, those poor people? Or were you also thinking, We have to help; there has to be justice for these people?

As a human father, two very strong instincts motivate me. The first instinct is affection. From the first moment I met each of my daughters, my heart was filled with love for them. The second instinct is protection. I may not be the biggest guy in the room, but if I were ever to sense that one of my daughters was in danger, you wouldn’t want any part of me.

A father’s strong sense of affection and protection for his children is infinitely multiplied in the heart of our heavenly Father. In Isaiah this bringing of the justice of God is called God’s strange work: “The Lord will rise up as he did at Mount Perazim, he will rouse himself as in the Valley of Gibeon—to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task” (Isa. 28:21).

The idea of the wrath of God is difficult for some Christians to process. But that’s because we’ve worried about God’s wrath being directed toward His own children. That isn’t correct. The object of God’s wrath in Scripture isn’t His children; it’s the enemies of his children—those who threaten His children. God’s wrath is not the same thing as God’s discipline. God’s discipline is for His children; God’s wrath is for those who relentlessly attack His children.

Yes, but aren’t we all sinners? Don’t we, even as God’s children, still deserve punishment for our sin? Yes, we do. And Jesus died for us. He experienced hell—separation from God—so that we will never have to. Look to Jesus: the Son of man lifted up. He is worthy. And He loves us with an everlasting love.

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