Go and learn what this means...

God interrupted my Haiti-saturated world to smack in the face with an idea these last few days.

Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,' for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Matthew 9:13

Do you ever chop up a scripture and miss something important? If you just said no, then obviously you're an extra terrestrial or a golden retriever and I'm honored that you're taking time to read my blog between television appearances.

I, however, am a human and I've been guilty of chopping this verse in two right on the "for". (Side note, will somebody PLEASE tell me where the period belongs in that sentence!?)

In so doing, I've beheaded Jesus's statement about the kind of people He calls to repentance: "not the righteous, but sinners." Without its head, this statement seems obvious and easy to dismiss; of course Jesus came to call the sinners to repentence, the righteous have no need to repent.

The sneaky hidden question, then, is "Who are the righteous?"

Be honest, didn't you just place yourself in the good guys camp? Don't be embarassed, most of us do, it's instinct. We are always the good guys; we are always the "us" in the "us versus them."

But riddle this for me: if I'm righteous and Jesus came for the sinners, he didn't come for me, did he? If I'm well and Jesus came for the sick...he didn't come for me, did he?

What?

Let's put the head back on this scripture, "Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy not sacrifice.'" Jesus is quoting from the prophet, Hosea:

For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings, Hosea 6:6

I know the bible is not constructed in chronological order, but I consider the prophets, like Hosea, as a kind of buffer between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It was through the prophets that God really brought home this new way of relating to him, personally and intimately, rather than through priests and sacrifices.

So what does this "new" idea about relationship with God have to do with the fact that Jesus came to call sinners and not the righteous? Well, the people who fulfilled the OT law of sacrifices were the righteous, so to speak. But the reality is that no one really could fulfill the Old Testament law, no one really was righteous under its tenets, they all fell short in some way, but there were some who seemed to.

If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eight day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. Phil 3:4-6

This is the Apostle Paul talking, in case you were wondering. If anyone was in the righteous camp, it was Him. Let me be clear here, because I think we can miss something important when we read about Paul: he did everything right.

According to his culture, his society, his religion and his family, he was perfect. And God didn't want him.

He didn't want him like that anyway, God doesn't want sacrifices. He doesn't want the law. Because God came to call not the righteous but sinners. God wants sinners...what?

God doesn't want people to sin but he wants sinners? This seems kind of confusing. And it is, it was even to the early church:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Romans 6:1

The entire book of Romans addresses this weird paradox that we face. It will take the rest of your life to figure it out but let me just highlight one point here, because I think it is key:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, Rom 3:21

See this is what Jesus and Hosea were talking about. Those sacrifices and burn offerings? God doesn't want them because he has taken true "righteousness" and manifested it separately from them.

I love that word, manifest. It means to make visible or able to be sensed (seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted). I like to think it means to "put skin on" something. Not coincidentally, the bible uses this word to describe Jesus:

Without controversy, great is the mystery of Godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, 1 Tim 3:16

So, how was righteousness "manifested" separate from the law?

...the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Romans 3:22

God doesn't want that righteousness that Paul had, "the righteousness that came through the law," He wants love, not sacrifices. Do you know what happened when God took righteousness away from the law and put it in faith in Jesus?

Sing it with me...

...there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23

This is why Jesus doesn't want "righteous" law-abiding men like Paul! Because He wrote a new law in love. He manifested that new law inside the womb of a virgin and named Him "Jesus. "

He came to call sinners because we're all sinners.

When Paul said, that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief," (1 Timothy 1:15) he wasn't being falsely humble. He wasn't just beating himself up over the whole "stoning Stephen" thing (Acts 8:1). He got it: he was absolutely no different from any other sinner on earth.

This is the truth Jesus was asking his disciples to "go and learn" because if they couldn't understand that concept, that righteousness existed outside of the things that they did, they were going to miss everything Jesus was about.

This is the truth that Paul was trying to explain to the church in Rome.

This is the truth that Martin Luther fought so hard for during the Reformation, it's the foundation of modern Christianity: Sola Fide, by faith alone.

So, why did I just take 3 pages to tell you something that you already know?

Because like the disciples, like the Roman church, like the 16th century church, we still don't get it! We're still counting ourselves with the "good guys." We're still fighting for our righteousness with sacrifices and offerings.

Don't think so? What are the things that make you "feel" Christian?

Going to church

tithing

giving to charity

being sexually pure

...not lying

...not swearing

...not drinking or partying

...not celebrating Halloween

Maybe these are good lifestyle choices, but they are sacrifices and burnt offerings. If this is the basis of your righteousness then Jesus didn't come to earth to call you; you're still hanging out with the Saul version of Paul, a Christian of Christians. You have to understand that when Paul said in Romans 3 that there is  now "no difference" between the law-abiding and the rest of us, he means that there is NO DIFFERENCE, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We have to embrace this idea. God help me, I have to embrace this idea. I have to stop piling up altar-stones to hide my sin. God doesn't want them, He wants my love.

I am a sinner

I am a sinner

I am a sinner

And Jesus came for me.

Loving with gloves on

Every Christian knows that you are not called to hate sinners but to hate sin. We will even claim that we actually do not actually hate sinners but love them and want them to be free from their sin.

And every sinner in the world thinks that this is a joke.

Do you want to know why? Because we don't love them.

We don't care about their life, we don't care about their story or their pain. We only care about what it will take to get them onto our team. Once they are a Christian, we think, then we can care about them. Caring about them now will just encourage them to stay in their sin.

Isn't that what we've learned? Isn't that what we've feared? If we accept someone in the middle of their sins, they will not have a reason to change; we can't validate a sinful lifestyle.

Friends, this is a lie.

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8 ESV

That death was not conditional, God didn't wait for us to come over to his side before He adopted us. He chose "the right time," and then He just did it. Moreover, He got impossibly intimate with our sin by putting on our own skin.

If I would love another person like Jesus, that means extending my love to them, without condition, and then holding it there until they take it. It also means no longer being afraid to love people.

As Christians, we can find ourselves in a perfect storm of fear. We are offended by sin, we are outraged by it, but, most of all, we are afraid we're going to be caught doing it. At the same time we are often afraid to actually tell people that they are sinners. These combine to create this wall of fear, denial, and hypocrisy that effectively separates us from the people we are supposed to love.

Essentially, we try to find a way to love people without having anything to do with them. Our love becomes political rhetoric, meaningless platitudes that sound inspired but fall flat. It's safe love, the kind of love that covers both our Christian obligations and our righteous backsides.

The kind of love that isn't really love at all.

In effect, we try to love people without getting their sin all over us and without making them mad. I picture a man gingerly handling a poisonous snake or an anthrax filled pipe bomb.

We are loving with gloves on.

Why God loves Dave, the Emo King

I originally posted this back in December as A Man After God's Own Heart. I've edited it down a bit for you.

Above his fame as The Original Worship Leader, his dramatic ascension to the throne from humble beginnings, and even the painful incident with Bathsheba, David was known as a man after God's own heart (Acts 13:22).


The mystery is, why? What was it about David that made him not only a chosen servant of God but also a man after God’s heart?


Abraham, the Patriarch, was not called a man after God's heart nor was Moses, the giver of the law and perhaps the humblest man in history. The apostle Paul, to whom Jesus himself made a special appearance, who authored even more books of the bible than Moses, who suffered more than any other apostle, was not called a man after God's own heart.


So, why David?


Why, more than any other man, do we associate David with the Messiah? Why was David given so many prophetic words through his music so that it seemed that he felt a foreshadowing of the very pain of our Savior? Why was Jesus called "son of David?"


It certainly was not because he was such a great King. He was the weakest son of a shepherd, a skinny emo poet. He was not particularly dignified (1 Sam 6). It took years for the people to accept David as their leader once he was chosen and even after that he was driven from the throne by his own son (2 Samuel 15). It was not because he was a moral success, his affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, an honorable and courageous soldier, is evidence of his weakness to his own passions. So, again, why would God call him a man after His own heart?


I’ve mused on the meaning that phrase, “a man after God’s own heart,” for a while now. My thoughtless assumption is that David was more like God, than any other and that is why he earned such a title. How could such an inconsistent and moral failure of a man really be described as “like God?”


After much wrestling, I still don’t have a complete understanding of what God meant when he said that, but I think it may be that, simply, David was in pursuit of God’s heart. He was, literally, chasing after God’s heart. Not withholding even his fears and frustrations, David threw his heart and soul upon the Lord. He confesses his love, desires, fears, pain, frustrations, and even his anger to the Lord in a rare display of honesty...and then he published it.

I am weary with my groaning; all night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with my tears (Ps 6:6)
I am weary with my crying; my throat is dry; my eyes fail while I wait for my God (Ps 69:3)
I spread out my hands to You; my soul longs for You like a thirsty land (Ps 143:6)

David wasn’t a perfect man, he wasn’t even, by our standards, a good man, but he was desperate for God. And this is, I think, the key. He was broken by his sin and couldn’t bear to be separated from God’s heart. His love for God welled up him, making him shameless. He was an unapologetic mess of emotions and passions, but oh how he truly loved his God!


I cannot explain the reasons for pain and brokenness in a way that really makes sense. I can't fathom the reason that God chooses to let us continue in these pots of clay and why He allows his children to dishonor him with our mistakes.


But, for some irrational reason, God loves messy people, he loves the poor in spirit. He loves using foolish people. He loves healing, even the wounds we inflict on ourselves. He loves our honesty. He loves our passion.


And this, my dear messy friends, is a very good thing.

Sarah Elizabeth

Love Hurts

Love hurts, love scars,

love wounds and marks

any heart not tough

or strong enough

to take a lot of pain.

 

I remember hearing someone talking about a “confrontation” they had initiated. After hearing a recap of the point by point dressing-down they had given to a friend regarding a certain sin-issue, I said, “Ouch!”

“Well, sometimes love hurts,” was their reply.

Love hurts. Somehow, I’m not sure that’s the correct interpretation of the phrase.

Would you think with me to your lowest point, to that horrible moment when someone found out that you had lied, cheated, stolen, gossiped, drank, smoked, laughed at a dirty joke, kicked a dog, said a curse word, lost your virginity, or looked longingly at a pretty woman who wasn't your wife. When your pride kicked your feet out from under you, and condemnation stole your breath, what pulled you out? What brought you back?

Was it a hard line? Was it the absolute holiness of God represented by the "discernment" of your brothers and sisters?

Let me take a time-out here to talk directly to the scholars: don't hide your actions behind Greek semantics, I took that class too. The difference between judgment and discernment is internal; I'm talking about perceptible actions.

OR, was it the grace of God represented by the agape love your received?

Love hurts? Doesn’t love cover our sins? (Prov 10:7)

This is not to say that sin does not require repentance, but, whenever the phrase "He/She needs to repent of his/her sin" is on our lips, we absolutely MUST remember that it is the kindness of God that BRINGS that repentance (Rom 2:1-4) not the dictate that repentance is necessary. 

Even those who have never read a bible know that sin requires repentance. It is not only the best publicized truth of Christian faith, but it is also one of the most universal social truths; there is rarely a need to say it. Yes you read that correctly, I’m saying that when someone’s sin is exposed, they do not need you to point out their sin and tell them to repent.

I already hear the reply: "But what if they are ignorant?" I’m going to be bold here and say, in 99 out of 100 cases, they aren’t. Most often, if someone denies their sin, they are not ignorant of it; rather their pride or pain has built up a rigid defensive wall against condemnation.

If you're hoping to help someone find repentence, there are two ways to get rid of this wall. You could get a sledge hammer or a wrecking ball to tear it down. However you will most definitely injure the soul hiding behind the wall. The other option is to coax the soul to open the gate to you, walk inside, and help them to deconstruct the wall, brick by brick.

Obviously, demolition is quicker and easier (and funner!) than deconstruction, but I’ve done a little demolition, so let me point something else out: you don’t demo something that you want to keep.

Love hurts. Does that mean love hurts the one receiving the love?

Regardless of the state of our hearts during our time wandering in the desert, regardless of whether we humbled ourselves and confessed or were humbled when we were caught, while we are sin, there is a place in our hearts crying out to God and to the people around us:

“Please! Know my sin and love me anyway!  I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know what to do so, please, let me walk into the light covered in dirt and love me anyway! Please don’t leave me!”

Oh, but how can we? How can we love you without touching your dirt? It’s embarrassing to talk about it. For that matter, how can we know your sin and not gossip about it? How can we listen to your difficult questions when we don’t have the answers? How can we listen to the screams of your flesh when you’re going through your sin-detox? What about the times when you’re mean to us? What about when your broken pride makes you lash out and accuse us? How can we pick you up when you keep falling down?

Love hurts. Isn’t it more accurate to say love hurts the one extending the love?

Don’t be fooled, friends. Grace isn't weak, it isn't soft. Extending love, acceptance, and forgiveness to a person who doesn't deserve it will be the single most difficult thing you will EVER do, if you don't think so, I have a Jewish carpenter with some wicked-looking scars who I'd like you to meet.

Yes, sometimes love hurts.


--Sarah Elizabeth