Judgment and Worship

It is written: "'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.'" (Romans 14:11 NIV)

I am starting to see more clearly now that the choices I make about what I believe about God and what He is like determine the outcome of my own salvation. The Great War between evil and good, between Christ and Satan revolves around the opinions of all those caught up in this battle about what God is really like. We are all trapped in this war and have no option to get out of it. We can only go through it to the very climax. But each one of us has the freedom to chose which side we will believe and that choice will determine the results that will be seen worked out in our life and our eternal destiny.

One of the important things to remember when seeking to understand these passages is to pay attention to the real meaning of the important words and realize that most of our assumed meanings are often decoys to keep us off target. Worship is one of those things that is little understood but is immensely significant and appears to be the real subject of this verse. One of the most important things about real worship is the spontaneous nature of it. Worship is not really worship if it is coerced or extracted. Worship is an activity of the heart and as such has it roots much deeper than our conscious activity or control. We may be able to perform outward acts of worship and appear to be worshiping, but real worship always springs from the affections of the heart at much deeper levels.

When God says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess to God, He is not describing any forced compliance with His demands that He has to be worshiped. That is never the kind of worship that He will accept or is interested in in the slightest. But God is so amazingly wise and patient in this very long and tragic experiment with sin that Lucifer started, that He knows that in spite of all the lies and deceptions and slander and distortions about Him, that in the end the lies will all come unraveled and the real truth about His perfect goodness, love, forgiveness and fairness will emerge above it all and will eclipse every deception of the enemy. This is the wisdom of God and this is the reason that every being that ever existed will one day unite in complete submission to the real truth about God and will willingly offer real worship to Him and acknowledge that His ways are right and fair and that there is no other way that can work. Lucifer's lies will be forever completely exposed and will never again have any power to deceive anyone. The light of the real truth about God will be clearer and brighter than at any time before in the existence of the universe and everyone will be permanently inoculated against ever desiring to rebel again.

It is this same truth about God that works in our lives today to attract us to prepare for this great day of real Judgment. For it is not enough to just be brought to the place of willingly acknowledging the real truth about God and giving Him the worship due to Him. All of the lost along with all of the fallen angels turned demons will also participate in this great day of real worship and confessional praise. But I certainly do not want to be in their midst on that day of worship. The worship that comes from those who are lost will not last very long because they have destroyed their capacity to love God in response to His love for them. And there is nothing more torturous than being intensely loved while being unable to love in return. That is the very essence of why hell will be so hellish.

What I noticed this morning was how closely the two quotations that Paul uses from the Old Testament are linked together. The previous one is found in 12:20 where Paul describes the essence of God's ways of dealing with sin and vengeance. It is in essence part of a definition of the wrath of God.

On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." (Romans 12:20 NIV)

Notice the clear results of these acts of kindness that we are commanded to use against those who are our enemies. The result of using God's kindness against those who abuse and hurt you is the producing of coals of fire. These are the very same coals of fire that constitute the fires of hell. And this is one of the best descriptions that can be seen as to how God is going to resolve the problem of sin in His universe. He will not eliminate sin by the use of force, through acts that are designed to instill fear in our hearts or through any other means invented by His archenemy. He does not have to adjust the way He deals with others and He did not have to come up with new ways to relate to His creatures when sin entered. It that were true then Satan's original charges would be proven to be true, for Lucifer insisted that there were flaws in God's ways of dealing with His created beings and that Lucifer had a better alternative. We can now see the results of his “better alternative” and it is quite obvious to most that it is not better in the least. But we are so blind to the better original plan and the character of God that we still refuse to believe that God's ways are really better and more attractive than the ways of this world.

The whole plan of salvation is the unveiling of the real truth about God in His attempt to attract as many as possible to become His experiments of grace. For if He is given permission by any individual, He will take them on as His unique and special project and will transform them back into His own image to reflect His perfect goodness, love and joy. As they allow Him to do His work in their hearts and minds by continuing to give Him ongoing permission, He will perfect His own character in their lives until they perfectly reflect His beauty and are filled with the passion that emanates from His own heart. They will glow with the spirit of love that is described in this verse and will be prepared to worship Him not only on the final day of Judgment but will be learning to truly worship Him more often even now.

Part of this transformation involves letting go of all judgment against those around me and embracing them as brothers and sisters in Christ. Chapter 14 is a description in part of this process of transformation and reveals some of the false ways of thinking and feeling that need to be let go of as the Spirit of God convicts me. As I focus my attention on God and the real truth about His character and the way He interacts with me, I will be more and more transformed into treating others the way God treats me and will lay aside all judgment and contempt.

This also makes more plain the truth that God never indulges in any of this counterfeit activity of judgment either. God does not tell me to not judge others and then turn around and do it Himself. God is my perfect example, not the exceptions to His requirements for me. It is a tragic mistake to believe that we are never to judge each other but that it will be O.K. for God to do it. God never employs the methods of His enemy and neither should I. The true kind of judgment that God uses is radically different than the condemning kind of judgment that I am warned against here. Counterfeit judgment involves shame and fear and condemnation. True judgment is the natural process of revealing what is hidden by simply introducing light and allowing the real truth to be seen as a result of that light.

This is precisely why God knows that at some point in time every person will willingly worship and confess to Him. (Remember, confession simply means agreeing with.) That is because light always ultimately wins over darkness. Darkness simply does not have what it takes to keep things hidden. When light is increased enough the darkness simply has to evaporate in its presence. But God values freedom so obsessively that He allows all the time it takes for every person to make up their own minds as to whom they will believe. And the issue that this belief is about is what we are going to believe about God.

I used to be very confused and frustrated when I read the books by the apostle John. He repeatedly said that Jesus' response to people looking for truth or eternal life was to tell them to “believe”. But often it was not clear at all to me what He was asking them to believe. He might say something like, believe on the Son of Man, but that still did not really make sense to me.

Then a few years ago it began to dawn on me what this really meant as my own picture of God began to radically shift. One of Jesus' claims was that He was the perfect representation of what God is like. So when He told people to believe in Him, He was really asking them to believe that the way He treated people and related to us is exactly what God is like and demonstrates the real truth of how God feels about us. He is really begging us to let go of our many lies about God and to believe the truth about God as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus.

Jesus came to expose and challenge our terribly distorted ideas about God. We still cling to many of those false ideas and He is still pleading with us to let go of these lies. The more clearly I perceive the real truth about what God is like and how He feels about me the more attracted I am to wanting to know more about Him and to become like Him. This has certainly not been my experience for much of my life. I spent a great share of my life living in fear and hidden hatred for God while desperately trying to perform good enough to stave off as much of His wrath as possible. That was a very exhausting kind of religion that I want to become totally free from as soon as possible.

I am now beginning to experience a new kind of Christianity, a very personal and intimate relationship that is growing, interactive and uncomfortably out of control at times. I have to remind myself that I am His project and not the other way around. Therefore it is not important for me to be in control but to simply listen and cooperate with whatever He wants to share with me at the moment. I am experiencing much more peace in this relational-based spirituality than I ever dreamed possible in my performance-based religion in which I spent so many years. I am learning to overcome fears instead of looking for more. I am slowly (way too slowly) learning to lighten up and try to allow my heart to breathe and thrive and blossom in an atmosphere of love and safety in the presence of God. As a result I am starting to understand more of the true meaning of worship.

As I see more clearly the real truth about God, that He treats everyone with love and respect, that His wrath is radically different than our assumptions about that word, that He loves His enemies and never reverses that love – ever, then my desire to bow my knees in willing worship becomes more real and my willingness to confess and agree with the convictions of His Spirit becomes easier. As I immerse myself in His Word and fill my mind with His truths I find my heart becoming more alive and more synchronized with His ways and with His true family both in heaven and here on earth.

As a result I choose to continue to offer more praise to Him for the wonderful revelations He has been sharing with me. I chose to honor Him by allowing Him more access to my heart and life so that He can more perfectly cause me to reflect His kind of goodness and character. I offer my praise and gratitude to Him for His amazing kindness, grace and unconditional forgiveness. And as I embrace that forgiveness and reflect it to those who have hurt and offended my own spirit, I experience more and more freedom from the heaviness that I have lived under for most of my life.

Thank-you Jesus!

(next in series) and also another post along this same subject.