Crushing Satan's Head

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. (Romans 16:20)

And there will be war between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed: by him will your head be crushed and by you his foot will be wounded. (Genesis 3:15 BBE)

In my Bible the translators arrange the text in such a way as to indicate a new paragraph starting with the words The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. But the more I think about this in the context the more I believe that it directly relates to the first part of the verse.

The imagery that God uses many times in relating to us how sin will be eliminated is often very violent. As a consequence we too often fall into assumptions that paint God as one who uses force and coercion to get His way. But I have been learning over the past few years that God has the wonderful luxury of not needing to resort to the ways and means of His enemy to accomplish His purposes. He is so infinitely wise and resourceful and His goodness is so effective that He has no need to lower Himself to such activities.

However, in order to communicate with fallen humans in ways that we can relate to and comprehend to some extent, he uses our language and imagery that is subject to misinterpretation if we are not careful to know His heart and be in tune with His Spirit. For I believe that until it is all said and done, the final results may look very much like God causes much of the violence in this great battle, but in fact it is sin itself that brings on and produces all the damage, pain and death that is seen.

In today's verses I see the seeds of this truth once again. Does God crush the head of Satan by overwhelming force and coercion? Does God stoop to fight His battles using the tools of His worst enemy and employing means that in fact would betray a weakness in His original arrangement before sin entered? Does God ever get desperate because He is committed to being consistent in His dealings with His created beings while His enemy gets to constantly shift positions and use deceptions and intrigue to maneuver to get his goals? How does God really go about crushing the head of His enemy without resorting to force and violating other's free will?

I believe that answer is clearly spelled out in the last half of this verse. It is the grace of God as revealed in the life, death and example of Jesus that is the greatest weapon that God uses to overcome evil. Not only will grace and love ultimately come out on top after all of Satan's schemes have been exposed as the frauds that they are, but grace and truth will be the effective inoculation that will prevent sin from ever occurring again throughout eternity.

While I was thinking about this, a verse came to my mind that suddenly takes on new life. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. (Titus 2:11) Salvation is God's answer to the challenge of sin in this universe. But when I took a look at the context of this verse which is verses 9-14, I am amazed at just how it is that grace overcomes sin and crushes the head of the serpent. For this text is right in the middle of a passage of instructions to slaves who have become Christians and how they should act.

Jesus came to earth to show us how to live as a humble servant, not how to make ourselves more powerful or better than others. Jesus came to reveal grace and truth and what that looks like when lived out in a humble human life. And the fact of the matter is that the more this grace is revealed in the lives of all who accept His Spirit and allow His principles to be worked out in their own lives, the more the kingdom of Satan is undermined and draws closer to complete collapse.

The head of the serpent is where all of the ideas and schemes of sin originated and continue to be produced to this day. But God does not counter force with force in trying to neutralize sin in His universe, He reveals grace, forgiveness, compassion and all the attributes of perfection that He has been accused of lacking by Satan. It is the revelation of the glory of God – His character – that crushes all the lies and deceptions that emanate from the head of Satan. And as our hearts become more filled with this same grace and our lives exhibit the perfect beauty and love of our Master, the whole facade that Satan has dreamed up will come crashing down on his own head and all that he was worked for millennia to accomplish will melt into emptiness.

Jesus, I ask for Your grace to be with me today and for all the rest of my life. Cause me to demonstrate Your grace through my words, my spirit, all of my communications and my relationships. Teach me to trust in the power of Your grace to overcome all sin instead of resorting to trying to use force or fear to overcome. Teach me Your ways. I thank You for answering my prayer, for showing me more of Your grace and truth, for providing such a perfect salvation to restore me to wholeness and oneness with You.

(next in series)

Holy Kissing - 2

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. (Romans 16:16-17)

I don't think that I will be able to uncover all that is in this verse, at least right now. I am sure that God is going to be showing me things about this for a long time to come. But I still want to see more of what is here in the context that will give me clues as to better understand it and how to apply it profitably to my own life.

As I look it over again this morning I notice the contrast between the first and last phrases that I highlighted here. The first one is an instruction to embrace others with acceptance, love, and brotherly affection. The Greek word for greet actually means to embrace and the Greek word for kiss is closely related to the word phileo which is one of the kinds of love which humans enjoy – brotherly love. This is the kind of love that is most commonly found in healthy family relationships, siblings that care about each other and look out for and defend each other.

So in this context what I see here is that Paul is telling us to greet each other in the body of Christ in just the same way and with the same or more affection that we would greet our family members if we were to attend a family reunion. Of course that conjures up different things for different people since many families have a lot of tensions and suspicions and unresolved grudges that need to be dealt with before they would qualify to fit this description. But I think most people could think of pictures of family members reuniting after long periods of separation and joyfully embracing, hugging and kissing each other without fear of going overboard or becoming improperly emotionally involved in the wrong way with those they are greeting.

I think that the real problem arises when a person has been so starved of affection and real family-type love in their life that any experience of open affection awakens in them an intense, even unbalanced desire to ratchet it up to a more intense level of intimacy very quickly. This is a need that often is the root of addictions, the craving of unfulfilled desires. This is often mistaken by those around them as a sign of moral weakness or even evil intentions on the part of the person. But in fact it is really a symptom of a heart that is damaged, suppressed or so dry from lack of normal doses of affection and affirmation that it wants to overdose whenever there is an encounter that opens that inner need. To attach shame and condemnation to the damage already present is to further alienate that soul from the family of God and is not reflective of the way God relates to us.

What I see in these verses is a contrast between the way we should relate to each other in the family of God and the way the world tries to fake living as family. The people described in verses 17 and 18 try very hard to appear loving and gracious and attractive with their words and smooth talking, but their spirit is subtly divisive and their compliments are really flattery. But they are so convincing in their persuasive demeanor and make others feel so good that it is not obvious that there is deception involved that is designed to exploit the deep hunger of the heart.

This is where the real danger lies. When a person who is starved for genuine affection encounters another person who seems to meet that deep need and then responds with unusual intensity, the strong potential exists for a relationship that can quickly move into something much different than brotherly, family-like love. This creates a situation where the heart will eventually be further wounded while it was only seeking to receive the nourishment that it so desperately craves. It can set up a relationship that can easily turn into exploitation instead of healthy heart bonding and Paul is warning us to be aware of this danger and to turn away from such subtle deceivers.

When Paul says that the greetings and kisses we use when coming together should be holy, it is helpful to remember what the real meaning of the word holy is. My ideas of holiness for most of my life was like most others, thinking that it had something to do with great piety, almost stern religiosity, strict behavior control or something along that line. But a few years ago I heard a wonderful explanation that radically changed my thinking on this word and helped to make much more sense out of everything that is referred to as holy. It is a meaning that can be derived by carefully studying the context as it is used throughout the Bible and also some careful research into the roots of the word in the original languages.

Holy primarily means that someone or something is exclusively dedicated to something or someone else. Holiness makes no sense in and of itself because it requires an object toward which it is devoted. So anytime you see the word holy you have to realize that there must also be a reason, an outside target to which it points. In the context of how it is most often used in the Scriptures, the object toward which this dedication is pointing is usually God.

Holy is actually very similar to the word whole or wholly. In the New Testament God is cultivating a family of people who are supposed to be holy to God, wholly dedicated to God, just as the nation of Israel was supposed to His representative during the Old Testament era but failed to fulfill most of the time. Those who accept the invitation to become an integral part of the family of God are committing themselves to being dedicated totally and exclusively for the use of God, to be led by the Spirit of God and to no longer serve themselves and the desires of their flesh. They no longer are to look to the world and those around them to meet their deepest needs and cravings but are learning to trust God implicitly for everything they need and desire. They are to become bonded and knitted at the heart level into the family of God and to express God's feelings and disposition towards everyone else in that family.

In this context, when people who are all dedicated unreservedly to God for His use and are learning to depend on Him completely for all of their desires, when these people meet each other, the affections and greetings that they give each other will have no danger of spiraling into something selfish and exploitative. They will see each other through the eyes of heaven and if a person is heart-starved for affection they will be drawn into a healing, growing community that will teach them how to mature and grow into healthy, love-bonded relationships with others. They will not shamed or criticized for their weaknesses and vulnerabilities but will be cared for and nurtured and protected.

Our greatest danger does not lie in expressing open affection towards each other in the family of God nearly so much as in the encounters we are sure to have with those who appear to be Christians but have not given themselves unreservedly to God in holy devotion. These are people who are trying to mix two kingdoms and think they can get the best from both while playing one off against the other. These are the people who will seriously damage the reputation of God through professing to be His chosen ones while following the cravings of their own fleshly lusts.

The true family members of God are devoted to Him so totally that they could be described as looking like slaves. But to not be holy devoted to God in this level of commitment is to actually remain a slave to our own flesh which in turn is subtly manipulated and controlled by demonic influences set on infiltrating and undermining the family bonds that God is knitting together for His glory. It is really a lack of holiness in its true meaning that causes these people to become so dangerous at the heart level. They have not given over their own hearts and affections to God exclusively and so they become a liability and a source of danger within the family of God.

The sad part is that they may appear to be so Christian in their words and actions that the hearts of those who are still vulnerable from unresolved damage and wounds are susceptible to being easily deceived and drawn into following them. Flattery has little affect on a person who is secure in their relationship with God and whose heart is resting in His love. But it has great potential for seducing those who are immature in their faith, who are newer in their experience and who need the nurturing and protection of a loving, healthy, holy family. They can easily be drawn into the glowing promises that such false-hearted Christians have to offer and they can quickly become involved in activities, beliefs and emotional attachments designed to feed into their sense of emptiness inside.

What is really sad is that this often takes on the form of strict religious activities and organizations that promise to satisfy the cravings for wholeness and holiness. It plays on mistaken ideas of what holiness really is and leads many to believe that they must work very hard to get their characters perfect so that God will accept them and save them in heaven. These kind of attractions can be so deceiving because they look so religious and pious and feel so right. But they only lead down a path that ultimately leaves the heart even drier and more empty than it was before because it does not connect the heart with the only real Source of life that exists.

There is, of course, other variations of smooth talkers who can easily mislead hungry souls into other paths that promise to fill our deepest longings for love. There are many paths of deception that lead in many different directions. But there is only one path to life and that is connecting our heart to the heart of God from which we can receive everything we were created to need for thriving and growing and maturing.

I know that I have a great deal of growing to do myself in this area. I have areas of emptiness in my own heart that make me vulnerable to those who have flattering words and demeanor designed to draw my affections away from God. I realize that I do not have very many healthy bonds of phileo love with people in the family of God as I wish I enjoyed, and that sets me up as a potential target for pseudo-Christians with schemes to fit my particular hungers.

But what I really desire is to connect more closely with real Christians and learn what real family bonds look and feel like. I want to enjoy the affections and family unity and trust that God wants me to enjoy while living a life of total devotion and loyalty to Him. I also want to learn to be a person who can provide that safe contact for others who are hungering for healthy bonds of affection. I ask God to dwell in me and grow me into more maturity and balance so that I can be a safe channel for Him to use to draw others into close relationship to His own heart.

(next in series)

Holy Kissing - 1

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. (Romans 16:16)

I can well remember when I was a teenager thinking that this verse was one of my potential favorites. I had an inclination to try to use this verse as a means of reminding those in power that their prohibitions against expressions of open affection between young people were out of line with the words of God expressed in the Bible and that we should be allowed to kiss whenever and whomever we wanted to greet in the name of God.

Of course there were too many obstacles and far too much opposing logic that I never attempted such an argument except maybe in the privacy of my room with friends who were like-minded as me. And then there was always this problem of the word “holy” inserted in the text that we knew would be used to shoot down any such propositions if we were to make such a claim.

In addition to knowing that the adults in charge of our lives would never even consider buying into such logic, it was also pretty realistic that most all of the girls (we had our preferences of gender after all) that we might want to greet in “obedience” to these words would likely react with less than enthusiasm should they ever be confronted in such an affectionate way. And beyond all of these problems the final argument that drained all the authority out of this verse for us, the argument that was sure to arise was that this was simply a cultural practice that has long since disappeared and no longer applies to us today. (Sounds a lot like what many people claim about the law of God.)

So each time I came across this verse I knew that I would have to reluctantly give up all my ambitions and desires to greet my “friends” with a kiss, holy or otherwise, without getting myself into a great deal of trouble. I had to relegate this verse to the rest of the problematic verses that simply could not be explained within the context of the traditions that controlled our lives and our religion. And even though our leaders and teachers insisted that “every word of the Bible is true”, somehow this verse was supposed to be less true at its face value than most of the others.

Well, here I am back at the same text but in a much different state of affairs, much older and much more inclined to reexamine the traditions of the elders. Does that mean that I can now revive my hopes of being able to freely kiss others whenever I greet them? Does that mean if I can figure out how to satisfy this qualifier of the word “holy” that I can then indulge my latent desires to show more affection to others than what is commonly acceptable? Am I now willing to risk getting my reputation into deep trouble by claiming exemption to my religious society's inhibitions by claiming the Word of God as my excuse for satisfying me needs for affection? That still makes me quite uncomfortable and I really think there is something much deeper here.

What I do find inside of me as I choose to meditate on this verse is that I am still not completely satisfied with the typical explanations used to explain away this verse by most religious people. And while I am aware of the pitfalls of uninhibited expressions of affection to whomever I feel inclined, even if it stops at just kissing them, I still sense in my spirit that there is something here important that I am still missing. I can't subscribe to the argument that this is now obsolete because of a change in culture; I never have been able to swallow that argument satisfactorily. And while I realize that this text could easily be abused and misused to justify activities that could quickly lead to emotional troubles and improper attachments that would dishonor the name of Jesus, I think that there may be something very important here that I might learn that could bless my life if I listen carefully and humbly to what the Spirit might have waiting for those who are honest and open and hungry for truth.

(next in series)

The Teaching Which You Learned

Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. (Romans 16:17)

I mentioned before that the teachings which we grow up with cannot be assumed to be right simply because we grew up with them or even that so many people around us embrace or enforce them. Paul is not saying here that whatever teaching you learned first must be the one that you need to stick with while resisting anything new or different. That is patently absurd even on the face of it.

In my own experience I clung to the teachings of my youth for many years but not because they brought me inner freedom or peace or joy but because my own conscience was like a harsh slave-master torturing me anytime I dared to stray from the demands of a fear-based, guilt-motivated, God-fearing religion of performance and striving for perfection. I was taught that I must perfect my life into pure holiness (in the old sense of the term) to prepare for the Second Coming of Jesus and when I couldn't contain or control the sin in my life that I needed to simply get more help from God. As a result, most of my prayers were “help prayers” – God, help me be good, help me stop sinning, help me...

This produced in me at a very early age a state of mind that could easily have been diagnosed as schizophrenia and paranoia. It also resulted in a seething anger inside of my heart that I constantly tried to keep suppressed and hidden from others but came out in acts of rebellion and a spirit of bitterness and resentment that still plagues me to some extent yet today. It affected the formative hard-wiring of my personality and warped my character in ways that are now extremely difficult to repair.

So, for someone to come along and claim that I need to return to the original teachings that I learned and get away from all the “heresies coming into the church” will likely trigger me in ways that might be disproportionately intense as compared to others I grew up with might react. The oppressive nature of any religion that is founded primarily on fear and guilt damages the heart and distorts its view of the face of God. Because of this I have no doubt that these teachings are nothing like what Paul had in mind when he referred to the teaching which you learned.

In my case, and most likely in the case of nearly everyone I know today, it is essential that we realize that the teachings of the early apostles was so radically different than what we think they taught from our distant perspective and through our present heavily biased filters, that we need to be extremely cautious about advising people including ourselves to trust in “that old time religion” to be good enough for us. What do we really have in mind when we talk about our old time religion?

But when I stop to think about this carefully I find it frustratingly easier to identify many of the teachings that are not part of what Paul was likely referring to than it is to delineate the teachings that he may have been referring to that are accurate portrayals of the truths about God. On the other hand though, I cannot deny that God has been introducing me over a number of years to some of the truths that energized and motivated the early believers and challenged the assumptions of all the religious and non-religious people of the whole world in Paul's day.

One thing that is becoming more and more evident to me is that many of the teachings that I need to embrace that were more commonly known in the early church are teachings having to do with the condition of the heart, teachings that are difficult to articulate with spoken language but that are powerfully conveyed through the other 90% of the ways humans communicate. The disposition, the attitudes, the atmosphere surrounding each person who had dared to join themselves to the early group of radical believers in Jesus spoke far more eloquently about the nature of the truth that was transforming their lives than any words they could possibly articulate.

But their words were also indeed ways which they used to portray the startling new truths about God parallel to the witness of their hearts filled with the passion of God. Their whole being was so charged with the love that they were increasingly experiencing from heaven that they simply could not contain themselves from seeking to draw others – anyone who would respond – into this fellowship of joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.

For a period of time after Pentecost the early believers were living so close to God and so filled with the passion of the Holy Spirit that their natural righteousness was frighteningly pure and became threatening to every other religious establishment. Because the truth about God and His passionate love for humans was so obvious in their lives and their interactions with each other, their lives acted as a brilliant light that by contrast exposed the false assumptions and teachings of every counterfeit in the world. This kind of confrontation always produces anger, fear and hatred in the hearts of those who resist this exposure and they have to make a decision to either surrender their falsehoods and embrace this glorious new life or they are driven to resist it and fight its presence in the world with everything they can muster to suppress it.

But the question keeps coming back around inside my head that I cannot as yet completely answer very clearly. This may sound absurd to some who have read much of what I have been sharing over the past few years and maybe it should. It also may have to do with the fact that I struggle with a weak memory and often cannot recall easily what I have written, even recently. But the question that haunts me when I read these words by Paul is this: What really is the teaching that was originally delivered to those early believers that so radically made them misfits in the world around them? What was the teaching that so charged their hearts that it could be described as a fire in their bones? What really constituted the original beliefs of those early believers that transformed them into little imitations of Jesus so completely that they became labeled by others as “little Christs”, which later morphed into the word Christian?

I really want to know more personally the answer to these questions for myself, for I want to experience the kind of transforming passion and new birth that became the norm for those early Christians. I want my own life to glow with the fire of God's passion in my bones, to abhor evil with a perfect hatred and at the same time to unconditionally and passionately love every sinner caught in the deceptions of Satan. I want to be radically born again the way Jesus insisted must happen before a person can even perceive the kingdom of heaven.

I am tired of playing religion, of depending on arguments to prop up truth, of clashing with others over differences, of living a selfish life and using religion as a means for getting me out of trouble instead of vindicating the truth about God. The little glimpses that God has given me over the past few years have awakened in me a hunger to enter into the kind of rest that God talks about, the kind of joy that energizes me so powerfully that all fear is overcome in my life, the kind of passion for glorifying God that causes me to see all self-interest as worthless and even a liability.

But I cannot make myself holy in the ways that I am now seeing true holiness – a total devotion and obsession with revealing the truth about God to those who don't know Him intimately. I have to keep seeking God's Spirit to do in me what I simply cannot do even though I have attempted to for many years. I have to learn to live as a mirror and become so enamored with the growing revelations of the glory of God to my heart that my life will be transformed into a spectacle of glory reflected from the very throne of God.

So how do I get there from here? I can't answer that definitively yet, and I'm not sure I ever will be able to. I have to trust God to lead me day by day in ways that still remain very mysterious to me but that accomplish what He is planning for my life as I trust His heart and motives. But I can turn the mirror of my soul toward the light that I find in the Word. I can choose to turn my mirror away from the contaminating influences of the counterfeit systems and the entertainments of the world designed to confuse and warp my pictures of God and myself. In fact, about the only thing that I have the freedom and ability to do at all is to keep choosing to come to Jesus in every way I can think of so that He will do whatever it is that needs to be done in me while I learn to cooperate with that work.

(next in series)