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JaredLafitte
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Name: Jared
Country: United States
State: Texas
Metro: McAllen
Birthday: 7/31/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: -Taco Bell
- Scary Movies
- Kevin Garnett
- KFC
- Basketball
- Evans
- Halo 2
Expertise: I can get dressed all by myself.
Occupation: Retired
Industry: Other
Message: message me
AIM:  fcd7gmindmin
Member Since:
6/26/2005
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| "Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of
law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that
one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the
God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles
also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and
the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this
faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law." - Romans
3:27-31, ESV
I think this sentence sounds very funny: "I'm not a legalist or
anything, but I have high standards." Can someone, please, dissect that
for me? The word "legalist" typically carries overtones of rigid
rule-holding, punishments for failure, overemphasized procedures, and
so forth. It is often used in a negative way. However, when a person is
described as having integrity or living with high standards, that
person is often described in a good way. A "legalist" and a "person
with high standards/integrity" both are operating on a set of rules,
however. Moreover, a "person with high standards" and a "legalist" can
often have the same rules in their minds as they go about daily life!
You can't have high standards without defining a standard, right? You
can't be a legalist without a rigid set of rules, right? Is the notion
of abstaining from alcohol a "legalistic" notion? Is the practice of
not gambling a "legalistic" practice? I think both of these notions
represent a lifestyle of high standards and integrity. If you seek to
keep away from gambling or sexual immorality or drinking or being angry
or impatient, are you being a bad "legalist"?
Quite honestly, I've never heard a compelling definition for the
term "legalism." Is a "legalist" someone who has a set of rules in mind
and lives to obey them? Isn't that what a "person of high
standards/integrity" is? Perhaps the world of confusing
connotations/associations has made our brows furrow upon hearing the
term "legalist" and our gaze brighten upon hearing the term "person of
high standards." Maybe the difference between a "legalist" and a
"person of high standards/integrity" is a difference of how rules are
followed and how one should feel if the rules are not followed. Maybe
the difference between the terms is a subtle difference in why,
exactly, the rules are followed. Most importantly, the difference
between the terms is NOT a fundamental difference in the rules
themselves! Abstaining from sexual immorality is not wrong. A
"legalist" might think about the process and purpose of this abstinence
in a different way from the way a "person of high standards" would
think, though this obviously does not make abstinence itself something
to be cast away. Any "legalism" is based on an interpretation of how
and why to follow rules, not the rules themselves. For example, it is
very possible to abstain from sexual immorality in order to make one's
self feel that he or she is holy, thus deserving of praise from the
Christian community... the right thing done for the wrong reason. This
is an example of legalism, I posit. A "person of high
standards/integrity" might abstain from sexual immorality because that
person is convicted by the fact that he or she was saved through God's
grace. He or she might long to worship God and know Him and cherish
Him, and his or her understanding of the beauty of God will be more
clear as the desire for sin fades. Do you see how vastly different
these two motives for abstaining from sexual immorality are? Surely,
abstinence from sexual immorality is not just another "rule" to be
mocked as people seek to berate Christians as "legalists." Abstinence
from sexual immorality is a life-changing, uplifting and beautiful
thing. It brings us closer to feeling the beauty of God, our life's
joy. This motivation is what fuels high standards and true integrity.
It helps us become really alive. Don't be so quick to declare someone
who seeks to follow high standards a "legalist." Don't first question
what rules someone follows or that someone follows rules, question why
they follow them. There are many bad "whys." Being motivated by wanting
to know Christ more clearly through upholding the law and hating sin,
wanting to be increasingly holy in imitation of God's holiness and
wanting to be near to God represent the beautiful and compelling
motivation of following rules. I believe that this motivation is what
compelled Paul to "uphold the law" after an entire chapter of
establishing the doctrine of salvation through faith by Grace. Here are
two unimaginably different functions of the same law:
1. The law before Christ was a set of standards which convicted people
of sin and served as a guideline for how to become right with God
through animal sacrifice, personal devotion, and so forth.
2. The same law after Christ is a set of standards which still convict
us of sin but do not serve as our means to being right with God. After
being saved by Grace alone, we can joyfully pursue life by the high
Christian standards before us in order to more clearly know the God Who
has saved us. In pursuing the Holiness of God, we take claim of and
celebrate our eternal life, which is, ultimately, knowing God (John
17:3).
Imagine a child who has to work furiously and follow a rigid set of
rules in order to be allowed to live at home. This is evil and hellish.
Imagine that child living with a constant conviction and fear of not
receiving the parents' approval... that child would grow to focus very
keenly on the rules and become perpetually afraid of the parents.
Now imagine that same child being told every day that he or
she is deeply and unconditionally loved by the parents. The child would
never have a fear of being disowned or kicked out of the home. The
parents have rules for their household, standards for the child to
obey, but they often explain to the child that the rules are there in
order to make life easier for the child, to give the child the best
chance at life and to help the child love the parents, love those
around him or her. These two scenarios represent the difference between
living in a "legalistic" way and in a "person-of-high-standards/integrity" way! This represents the difference between being condemned through the law and upholding the law in Christ.
What you do in your life has no meaning if it is not constantly
supported by a mission statement, a clear and glorious set of "whys."
The only true legalism is rules for the sake of following rules. This
is senseless. We are too complex, as human beings, to live for the sake
of anything lower than the Majesty and Knowledge of God. We uphold the
law because it gives us the best chance at living well. The Bible is
chock-full of rules from Leviticus to Isaiah to Revelation to Ephesians
to 1 John, and each one of these rules serves to make us most alive.
Most of all, these rules serve to make us closer to understanding the
beauty and holiness of God, thereby understanding more of Him to
worship more of Him, thereby fulfilling the deepest human need:
intimacy with the Father. We uphold the law ultimately because it draws
us to more deeply know the One Who has saved us unconditionally (Eph.
2:8-9), not ultimately because we want to feel a sense of
accomplishment or a sense of good repute with those around us. Rules
are beautiful... they provide a skeleton for the heart and body of the
ability to worship and celebrate. Rules are like God's moral map to be
explored by those He loves: the more we seek to follow them, fearless
of judgment, the more of God we will discover. When a heart knows WHY
it follows a good rule, it feels much joy. The ultimate "why" for
following the Bible's rules is this: we want our minds to be as close
as possible to the way they'll be in Heaven, savoring and loving God,
immersed in sinless Glory. Why wait? Rules are there to help you get
closer to the Heavenly state now! Don't you want to get to know the God
Who has justified you? Don't you want to "live your best life now"? :)
Don't listen to people who tell you that "rules are bad... the
only thing you need is love." This is hell in disguise. This is a
passive, floundering moral relativism which ultimately leads people to
worship themselves and other humans, the first rule of rebellion
against God. You can't love if you don't know how. You can't know how
unless you're told what is unloving. You can't understand what is
unloving unless God explains the difference between right and wrong to
you. The Spirit helps us with this (Rom. 12:2). Why would we need the
Holy Spirit if there were no true rules? How would our sanctification
be contextualized? What would we grow INTO?
Rules have given increasing joy to those who know WHY they follow
these rules for a long time. When you uphold the law, when you live as
a person of high standards, you are setting the foundations for an
increasingly-large telescope which will give you a vision of the
Holiness and Grandeur of God, something for which your entire life will
thirst whether you know it or not. We glory in our salvation, seeking
to be close to the God who justified us, through upholding the law!
Don't just seek to know WHAT to do to live a better life, have a
blazingly-sure understanding of WHY you want to do these things the
Bible commands. When you have the "why" of intimacy with God,
celebrating Him and loving others that they'd know the One Who will
occupy the minds and hearts of all eternity, your life will mean
something more than it ever has. Let's beg God for the ability to hate
sin, to uphold the law and pursue righteousness (if there were no law
or rules, how would we know how to pursue righteousness at all? What
would sanctification accomplish?) so as to be nearer to Him. Let's
uphold the law and set high standards for ourselves as we've been
upheld and are being upheld by the highest standard of all, Jesus
Christ's "law of faith", His power and love. | | |
| "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." - 1 Corinthians 13:12 (ESV)
"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face."
1. A mirror dimmed in vanity
As a human being, I am a glory-and-power machine. Before anything else, I'm made to experience awesomeness, to thirst for awesomeness and to receive it. I am meant to get used to, hunger for, and process awesomeness the way a digestive system is made to get used to, hunger for and process food. My number-one priority and desire is to be close to something big, to be associated with something awesome, to be near the big thing that's happening. This is the fundamental, paramount descriptor and eventuality of my existence. My desire to be photographed with a rock star or my desire to have the autograph of a famous athlete hanging on my wall both represent a dim analogy of the God-implanted desire for us to be associated with and cherish something awesome. God has given me a desire to feel awesomeness... and the desire-giver is the ultimate satisfaction of the desire, through virtue of Christ's death and resurrection which brings us into fellowship with awesomeness. I'm convinced that the ultimate essence of hell is that those in hell are eternally thirsty for the soul-satisfying Glory of God so they can taste it... but they will never receive it. It's not just about being "punished" for sins... it's about being separated from the ultimate peace and goodness and beauty of Glory and awesomeness while longing for it. We're crafted to crave eternal experiences with the awesomeness and power of God. However, asking me to really understand the awesomeness of God with the brain I have now is like asking me to hold the earth in my hand and throw it. It's inconceivable... my eyes are too small to see something that big. The problem (or solution) is, my eyes still WANT to see something that big... something GOD big. God made my eyes to long to see Him. I have to be near power, I have to declare that something is awesome, I have to let my soul breathe the oxygen of magnitude... but my eyes and my soul's lungs aren't big enough to handle God. I only have a bitterly-translucent mirror of the human experience, and the most it can reflect is the light of human accomplishment, human vanity. To many, this is the brightest light they've ever seen. There is no concept of comparison of one light to THE light. Dimness is only dimness when the one looking at the dim light clearly acknowledges that something, somewhere, is much brighter than the dim light. I can feel the presence of God which makes my presence and vanity seem like a dim, fading spark, but I can only "feel" it the way you can "feel" something big in a pitch-black room or the way you can "feel" that something big is about to happen before it actually happens. One day, however, a light will be turned on. It won't come from a 60-watt bulb, either. One day, the "hope of Glory" will be revealed to me. I'll receive confirmation of how small I really was, how small man really was, when my soul's eyes are literally made larger to take in the light of Jesus in full... face to face. Comparison will manifest itself in the deepest way possible, and I'll laugh at the times when I glorified myself when I see Him face to face. I'll realize how dimly-lit the light of humanism and self-glorification really was. One day, Glory will triumph over attempts at glory. Muhammad Ali will look like an an amoeba fighting the sun when he stands next to a blazingly-lit Christ whom all can see. So will I. So will all humanity... and we will love it. We longed for Glory our whole lives... and we glorified ourselves because it was easy to do it, because the maximum our eyes could handle something as small ourselves in the mirror. However, those in Christ who cherished His awesomeness, although they could not fully see it, will receive their deepest satisfaction in an eternally-beautiful way. We didn't know what "dim" was because we'd never heard of real light, John-1-type light, before... but Christ will change all that. We'll see the exhaustive and exclusive human thirst satisfied eternally... we'll drink in Glory and savor it forever. It will be the most right thing we will be able to imagine doing, and it will be imagination itself. We might be very embarrassed for the times in which we clearly worshiped ourselves, but we might not have room to even process the emotions of embarrassment when we have the Glory of all Eternity standing in front of us. We will finally taste eternity-level greatness, our deepest, most inexplicable dreams made beautifully real.
"Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."
2. Loved in order to see Glory
What does it truly mean that God loves me eternally? It means that He knows me and cherishes my existence, an existence which is founded upon and sustained by a thirst for Glory. I have been fully known; every molecule of my being is knit together to desire awesomeness, to desire an experience with eternal powers. My Maker, the God of all eternity, knows my deepest need. My deepest need is not to be saved from my sins for salvation's sake; my deepest need is to be in the presence of God and to cherish Him. The evidence for this is that without His salvation, I would spend a lifetime in damning sin wrongly cherishing myself and considering myself, however implicitly, to be the God of eternity in my endless capacity for worship. I have been fully known, wrought to savor the Glory of God, made to have my futile inclinations toward self-worship fully corrected so that I can know my purpose as much as God does. I know THAT I can worship... and when I see His face, I'll fully know WHY I must worship. Glory, eternal, awesome, powerful, soul-saving, time-creating, majesty-commanding Glory, will stand before me and cradle me in Its arms. Jesus Christ, the ultimate treasure of all time, will fill me with Himself, and I will fully KNOW, being made aware of the crevices and corridors in my soul by them being filled, those crevices and corridors and beautiful needs about which I'd be sinfully unaware without them having been filled by Christ. I will KNOW my purpose, my Lord, the way the Lord knows my purpose. I will taste and touch my identity without questioning a thing. Glory will completely, not partially, awaken my heavenly senses to purpose and fulfillment, and I'll have a flawless understanding of the fact that I was loved and known and cherished in order that I'd be brought eternally close to the presence of God, the light of all eternity, to savor it, and this will be all of all. It will be real. It will be awesome. It will make everything else, every other motive I ever had, seem completely laughable. I am fully known by God now in ways beyond my knowing, but I know that I am known and loved in order to be close to Him (Jn. 17:3,24). The eternal details and implications of this closeness will be revealed when I'm wrapped in eternal light one day, seeing Jesus Christ face to face. What purpose to consume all other purposes, what knowledge to emblazon Glory upon all other knowledge, to discipline all understanding unto His universal purpose of Glory and love for those who are fully known as savorers of Glory through the atoning sacrifice of Christ. May life be such that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for we are growing closer and closer to the only purpose, to the eternal outworkings of our being loved and known, to the Glory of Jesus Christ and God the Father, Who has crafted purpose out of Glory for our souls to one day know. For now, we live in unshakeable, unspeakably loud hope, for we're imprinted with the assurance of all assurance... that we will soon fully know and rest, cherished in the arms of the King of Glory. That doesn't happen at concerts.
| | |
| Jimmy and Jill went up on a hill
to talk and laugh and cry until
they found each other, and when they did
they noticed that all went still
all was calm, all was smooth
time slowed down, life didn't move
Jimmy and Jill were two adult kids
who had a forever to prove
after they found each other, they cried
and hugged so tight that every tear dried
but forever came knocking; under Glory, their love slid
and the hill felt empty inside
so Jimmy and Jill began their way down
and couldn't avoid a void in the ground
forever was way too big for love's lid
and Jimmy and Jill's hope was nowhere to be found
The two tenderly tied tentacles that Tore
Some secret soul's structure, stretched so Sore
By burdens building bleeding blossoms, beckoned both Before
God, greedily grasping glory, gouging greatness - gaping Gore
Jimmy loved Jill as a worshipful end
and Jill loved Jimmy as a toying boyfriend
they came to love's cusp, the bottom of the hill
and watched their Christianity end
they watched their holey hearts wholly pour into their souls' pores
and watched the souls stretch sorely as they did implore
the tightly tied tendrils of the hearts to have their will
so forever didn't knock anymore
and they laughed and they cried and made their own mound
of fallible, follied affections and desires profound
forever and forever's call couldn't fulfill
what their ears wanted to hear: now's sound
they pleasured and splashed in passions to touch
the newly stretched souls which they loved so much
and love took forever's place in NowVille
so Jimmy and Jill only had a nothinged passion to clutch
The two tenderly tied tentacles that Tore
Some secret soul's structure, stretched so Sore
By burdens building bleeding blossoms, beckoned both Before
God, greedily grasping glory, gouging greatness - gaping Gore
After they'd cut their perceptions of God
into bleeding pieces of Glory, they both felt flawed
for in being tied, they tied love and worship, both wasted
on seeing God's Majesty in their eyes which replaced it
so they dragged away over empty hills and broken hearts
and dashed dreams and desires cracked into a thousand parts
in the end, Jimmy and Jill went back up on that hill
to feel the highest, but soon loved because God was higher still
the only thing better than being great is knowing greatness | | |
| 2. Victory through Proper Prioritization
I think that another way to pursue sexual morality would be through an informed and constant "identity check." These are two components to a proper assessment and prioritization of the desires of self which I consider to be vastly important in avoiding sin and pursuing good.
A. The "informed" identity check
I believe that the question "Who am I?" is better served by a second iteration of the question. "Who am I FIRST?" is the more appropriate way to ask "Who am I?", I believe. It is my conviction that one cannot properly assess WHO he or she is until he or she has firmly understood WHY he or she is. Thus, there is created a second set of questions: "WHY am I?" or "WHY do I exist?". I believe that these questions are the more explicit forms of the "who am I?" questions, for they investigate identity more productively. The only person that can know WHO He is without having to ask WHY is God Himself. Thus, everything ELSE in creation must ask a WHY, as everything else exists only in relation to God's desires and supremacy (Colossians 1:15-23). The second iteration of "Why am I?" could be "Why, first, am I?" What is the FIRST reason you exist? Do you exist MORE to be a loving wife or husband or more to be a good student? Do you exist more to have a good laugh with friends or more to have your mind overwhelmed by the bigness of God? Do you exist to enjoy these things "separately" or to enjoy these things in a compelling connection and analogy for the Glory of God? Are you more a human who knows God or more a human who is known by God? I am convinced that having an informed identity check must involve a well-deduced hierarchy of reasons for being alive. It is through this hierarchy that we can develop a path toward sexual morality. Without hierarchy of desires or hierarchy of identity (am I more a bodily human being or more a Christian?), we develop a sagging normalization of self, wherein each whim and impulse is given equal respect, and this inconsistency creates the grounds for passionate sexual immorality. It is easy to fall into sexual immorality when one considers one's self just as much a sexual being as a soteriological being, for example. When pleasure is pleasure for pleasure's sake as opposed to being explicitly for the sake of being enjoyed in purity as an analogy to the Glory of God, sexual immorality runs rampant. Do you sense the bigness of God when you lust? None of us do; we're worshiping ourselves and our desires. This happens because we are more compelled to think that we exist for ourselves than for God. We have to viciously and firmly and passionately prioritize, or we will live a life of worshiping many little gods.
"Why am I FIRST?" This question must be asked. Most evangelicals will assent to the statement that man's chief end is to know God and to enjoy Him forever. However, not many evangelicals will seek a lifestyle of asking how to ORIENT the daily motives, deeds, activities and interactions of their lives UNTO this CHIEF end. The Westminster confession becomes an emotionally-charged passing reference which leaves the mind as quickly as it comes into it if that mind is not perpetually aware of Who owns it FIRST. Many people see a "chief" end as a chronological end, wherein we experience God's bigness in Heaven, but not now. For now, the most important issue possible is the issue that is happening RIGHT NOW... at least, many think this way. This happens because of a lack of prioritization. This happens because we clearly don't "step back" enough. We don't think deeply, we don't reflect, and we don't make judgments about what matters most. Thus, we wallow in a life of several different gods a day. The tendency to make what is happening in the moment the most important issue of one's life, i.e. pleasure, is a clear testament to a lack of methodical, informed priority of desires and identity. When an uninformed Believer is in an emotionally-charged worship time, the worship is the most important part of his or her life. However, the Believer might see the sexually-driven movie he or she watches with friends to be the most important part of his or her life when the time comes. This happens because the Believer asks, "WHY do I exist?" and finds the answer to be something vague like this: "To enjoy God, to enjoy pleasure, to have fun, to hang out, to love others..."... and the list could go on. There is no discrimination, thus no penetrating moral perspective. Much moral relativism is birthed when one claims to exist to "love others" but speaks nothing of God, and this travesty happens very often. One can't even answer the question: "How do I love others?" without heavily prioritizing God as the most important thought that can be had. The highest demonstration of love for others is a perpetual verbal reference to the Glory of Christ in the midst of kind words and kind action, for Christ is the highest example of love! The Believer who vaguely thinks through the question, "why do I exist?" would be vastly helped if he or she asked "Why do I exist FIRST?" or "what are the highest and most important things I can think about?" If there were a preconceived understanding of purpose, the Believer would be given the grounds for proper discernment before he or she enters any activity or thinks any thought. However, purpose itself is hierarchical! To believe that you exist for an ultimate purpose is to heavily imply that you DON'T exist as much for any other purposes! For all mankind, this purpose is firstly to know and cherish the greatness of God (Jn. 17:24). All other purposes must be FUNCTIONING unto this end, thereby subordinate, thereby not demanding the IMPORTANCE which this end so timelessly demands. In other words, you can only be a Christian if you are MORE a Christian than anything else.
Many people challenge me by saying that open-mindedness is the most important virtue for the Believer. I think this is disgustingly dangerous territory. The whole point of having an open mind is that once you've discovered what is MOST important, your mind closes down on it, like a bear trap! We KNOW that celebrating the Greatness of God, being loved by Him in order to be intimate with Him, sharing the evangel of Christ with others so that they would KNOW God (John 17:3), and so forth is the ultimate, exhaustive, exclusive, and other-purpose-subordinating reason we exist. This is not AN important thing, it is THE important thing. We do not prioritize enough when it comes to God and the Holiness we must pursue in order to know God. "Why do I exist FIRST?" If we emphasize the FIRSTNESS of God's goodness and holiness, we will unquestionably orient all other secondary desires and motives unto that firstness.
Let's look at sin as an example. Outside of a heavily prioritized worldview (when you walk into any situation, you are thinking: "I am FIRSTLY a Child of the King, I know Him and seek to make Him look great and pursue His Holiness, no matter what situation I enter"), we will describe our sin as "bad." We won't have a clear understanding of what sin DOES unless we see God as MOST important. We will only make normalizing references to our activities such as "bad" or "good." Instead, we need to see sin, for example, as something which distorts our ability to see God's greatness and Holiness and as something which distorts our ability to learn from Him, through His Word, etc. If God is the most important, anything which gets in the way of our understanding Him will quickly move from being nonchalantly described as "bad" to being vehemently opposed. If sin is JUST "bad", then we'll view our temptation, in the moment, toward sexual sin as something ENTIRELY DISCONNECTED from the words we said at our worship service. If we don't make our identity in Christ the FIRST identity we have, we'll have a lifetime of identities, alternating between being "good" and being "bad", without an understanding of our sin as being something which distorts our ability to connect with God. You can't truly know how "bad" something is until you know how much it hurts your understanding of "good"! You can't attain this understanding until you've created a thorough, firm worldview which says that you are MORE a Christian than anything else and that you want God's Holiness and intimacy BEFORE you want man's approval or anything else! When we are thoroughly convinced about WHY we exist, we'll think a bit differently about entering into sexual sin. Just as we'll see sexual immorality as distorting our ability to connect with our first priority, we'll learn to see sexual morality as enhancing our ability to connect with our first priority, which is the Greatness and Holiness of God. Sex is a functional part of intimacy, intimacy helps to inform and sustain marriage, marriage is a functional part of sanctification and an analogy for Christ's relationship with the church, sanctification is a functional part of our cherishing God's bigness, and this eternity of cherishing is our chief end. Do you see what has happened? Priority has taken place. Systematization has taken place. Most importantly, something has taken a perpetual FIRST place, and the other things have become working parts unto that FIRST place. Sexual morality is beautifully put in perspective when one sees sexual desire and the body and sexual intercourse exclusively as working parts of the FIRST reason they exist. We don't exist to feel pleasure and also, in a disconnected way, to see the Bigness of God, we exist to make pleasure, purely pursued, an analogy for and a hope for the Greatness, Glory and Grandeur of God, in Whom we consist by Christ before anything else! This analogy will not occur through cheap, fake romance or lust, thus we should grow increasingly critical and skeptical of these things as we grow increasingly secure in WHY we FIRSTLY are. If God is a mere part of your life, there's no reason sexual immorality can become just as big a part. God has to be the whole (and He WILL be in the end, praise Him!).
B. The "constant" identity check
Sexual morality would be deeply helped if it were emphasized and pursued as much as sexual immorality is. This is an issue of quantity. It is not about how good a message of sexual morality is, it is about HOW OFTEN that good message of sexual morality is poured into one's mind. If sexual immorality can be everywhere, 24/7, why can't sexual morality? Would that be too "churchy"? Is it really possible to be "too pious"? Is it possible to "overwhelm" people with the Glory of God? Most people certainly aren't overwhelmed by sin... the more we sin, the more we want to sin! The quantity of evil must be met by an equal or exceeding quantity of good. If we profess to be Believers who carry a priceless message, the quantity and quality of our message must be equally sky high. I'm convinced that the people whom God uses to change the world at massive levels are not merely the people who think good things, but the people who think those good things ALL THE TIME. You have to be obsessed with changing lives in order to change lives for the better... because sexual immorality is absolutely obsessed with sucking people into it's pit. Satan never sleeps. The scariest thing is this: his message never changes, either! The most effective sins he uses are the sins which have lasted forever, like pride and hedonism. Satan's not struggling for new and effective ways to reach people, especially in the area of sexual immorality. Why should we?
Too often, our pursuit of originality in proclaiming the things of God eclipses our effectiveness because we assume that a message loses its value in direct proportion to how often it is stated. Nothing can be farther from the truth! When it comes to the Gospel message and to themes like the fruits of the spirit and holiness, the message INCREASES in value for the listener the more it is emphasized! It's not about how "original" you are when it comes to the Glory of God, it is about how CLEAR and how CONSTANT you are. It is not boredom which causes the message of sexual morality to seem unreceived; it is sin. If you were to try to save a person trapped in ice, and you hit the ice once with a salt-laced ice hammer, and you had little results, would you stop and switch to using pebbles or your hands? Of course not! You would pound and pound the ice until there were an effect. You would REPEAT your actions and increase the NUMBER of times per minute you hit the ice... it would become a matter of QUANTITY. You KNOW the salt-laced ice hammer works and that it is effective to break ice. You just need to POUND the ice MORE times than you originally thought in order to break it! With all due respect, the message of sexual morality, it's part in our understanding of marriage, sanctification and Godliness, needs to be absolutely shoved down our throats. It needs to be forced into us, we need to be gloriously dragged through it, rolled in it, soaked in it, immersed in it. Why? Because sexual immorality is doing that very thing. Quantity needs to challenge quantity. Hard preaching makes soft people. The image of sexual sin needs to be aggressively challenged by the preaching of an image of sexual purity, an image of what sex can look like in a proper marriage. If the Lord calls me to marriage, and if I am married to a woman who has grown up in modern American culture, I joyfully look forward to attempting to help her destroy any potential messages about her value which the sexually-charged culture has thrown upon her. I look forward to constantly and methodically breaking ice. If the average, Americanized teenage girl spends 167.5 hours a week in a cultural ethos which tells her that her prime identity is found in her physical appearance and sexual appeal, and she spends half-an-hour a week hearing a message to the contrary, then thinks little about the message, how do you think she'll be swayed? This is a message which demands CONSTANCY. Sexual morality needs to be forced upon us more often than we're used to. Why? Because we're used to being surrounded by sexual immorality, like it or not. The command to be gentle needs to be forced upon us much less gently than the way in which we tend to receive it! I'm NOT promoting a second Crusades. I AM promoting a firm, active, aggressive and CONSTANT proclamation of the image of sexual morality, the hope and purity of right sexuality. Brothers and sisters, we're deeply vulnerable and susceptible. We need more than a good message on right sexuality, we need a good message on right sexuality CONSTANTLY. It is not enough to live in a Christian world wherein we have a constant image of sexual immorality challenged by a significantly-less constant call to abstain... we need a passionate, aggressive, constant image of what right sexuality is shoved into us so that it can consume the culture's image. Brothers and sisters, I am convinced that this is how the sexual immorality monster might be slain. Sexual morality is rightly pursued when the quantity of its proclamation matches the level at which we esteem it. Don't let immorality cherish it's gods more sincerely than we cherish our God, the one true Christ. Sexual morality is a real, powerful thing, and it serves as a powerful directive for pursuing the Creator of Love, the Author of Majesty, the Lord of Lords. Lord Jesus, please strengthen us to live at new levels through eternally-old truths.
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| 2 John 4-7 devotional
“I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.”
Truth is love
I find it astounding that there is a massive school of thought which says something to this effect: “Theology and doctrine and philosophical wanderings about God really mean nothing. No one is sure about these things anyway, and people still build their lives on stupid theology and argue with each other and claim to be certain when they can’t be. Doctrine divides, love unites. We shouldn’t worry so much about doctrine and philosophy, since nobody can be certain about all that stuff anyway; we should just love each other and live like Jesus in the world.” I ask those who say these types of things: “What exactly is love? How do I go about loving others and living like Jesus in the world? Can you teach me how and why I should love?”
Truth is love. John rejoices with the elect lady and her children that they have been “walking in the truth,” just as they were commanded by the Father. In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus provides a particularly explicit, if not the most explicit discussion in the New Testament, of the most significant “commandments of the Father” through the law:
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which is the
great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great
and first commandment. And a second is like it:You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Mt. 22:34-40, ESV)
On the commandments to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself depend all true doctrines and teachings and philosophies. Upon these truths of love for God and love for all made in His image depend orthodoxy. “Straight teaching” and love for God are indiscernible; “love for God” and “love for others” are precisely what make “straight” the teaching! Love for God and for others is the root of all true and correct belief, and any system of motives which is not founded upon firstly a love for God and a corresponding love for others is wicked. Not only are love for God and love for others the foundations for all true and right teaching, they are the sole eventuality of all true and right teaching. Doctrine does not divide; sin divides. Love cannot unite without doctrine, for how can those who claim to love truly love outside of knowing and loving the author of Love, which is is the ultimate orthodoxy? Truth is love. Love is absolute truth. The feeling you get when you know you are cherished by someone who cherishes the Lord is not an interpretation, it is the deepest teaching and love of all reality. That feeling is God at work. Love is equally a teaching and a result of a teaching. True orthodoxy must only culminate in true love. Do not scorn doctrine; scorn distortions of doctrine. There is no way that your life will fall apart if you direct it beneath the doctrine and practice of having the deepest affections of worship you can possibly have turned to the Lord. It’s worked for billions and billions of people for a long, long time.
Love the Lord your God
“And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.”
This is systematic theology and orthodoxy at work to the finest degree. John urges the elect lady that he is not coming up with a new commandment but is reminding her of a timeless and old commandment. “Love one another.” John does not stop there, however! He creates a two-part system in going about explaining what “love one another” means. One question I love to ask people is this: “Why does love exist? What exactly is love?” Many people either hate the question or love the question. I believe John answers it deftly: “And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments.” Simply put, there is no distinction between loving God and “His commandments” or orthodoxies and loving others. When Jesus explained that we should love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our minds, I believe He was creating a starting point for how our affections should be channelled. The Word “God” is completely wrapped up in the connotations of supremacy. This supremacy means a beginning point for our affections! If we love the Lord our God with all that we have (the ultimate commandment, in which we will be “walking”), our ability to love will flourish and expand because we are connected to the source of love (Eph. 3:17-19), and we will have no choice but to love others deeply as we are in perpetual acknowledgment of the God Whom we desire to honor. If we are truly loving them, we should feel a constant tickling to have them know about Christ. If you want someone to taste an orange, don’t just give them one orange, plant an orange tree in their backyard (a working, informed and active knowledge of the Lordship and lifestyle of Jesus Christ) and show them how to care for it.
Because of this system of love for others informed and sustained by love for God, we can claim that love for others does not inherently create love for God, but love for God inherently creates love for others. It is very possible to have a lifetime of affections for those around us without caring about God (it happens all the time), but it is impossible to truly care about God, loving Him with all that we have, and not deeply love others. It is very possible to love for the wrong reasons and to idolize people in loving them. The ultimate orthodoxy is that “love” and “Christ” are absolutely and unremittingly indistinguishable (1 John 4:8). The ultimate demonstration of love is Jesus’ death and resurrection (Rom. 5:8). When we love others, especially those who don’t care about God, we should have a piercing compulsion to tell them about the love of Christ, otherwise we are counterfeiting love. To say that love for others will eventually draw the lover and the beloved to a working, deep knowledge of Christ is to say that dripping the juices of the fruits of an orange tree onto the soil of someone’s heart will eventually cause an entire tree (of the knowledge of the Supremacy of God, John 17:3) to take root in their heart’s soil and grow. We must be equally verbal and active in our love; we must tell about our love and moreover it’s source as much as we demonstrate it! Orthodoxy creates orthopraxis, or “straight practice.” Do we love because it feels right, which is a pretty nebulous reason, or because we KNOW the existence and therefore supremacy of God and want to honor Him through loving others? Don't talk about oranges without talking about the orange tree.
“I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.”
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