Wrath of God Abides on Him

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36)

I have been learning a great deal about the wrath of God over the past few years and this verse I find quite interesting. The impression that comes to my mind about this has to do with the basic nature of the difference between counterfeit religion and true spirituality. Sin originated in heaven when Lucifer externalized religion, moving it away from a heart-based response of love to our heavenly Father to a focus on external appearances and power. When his mind made the shift from inward beauty rooted in the condition of the heart to a belief in value based on outward beauty, the track was laid down for all the rest of the deceptions of sin to be formulated in his brilliant mind.

Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. (Ezekiel 28:17 NRSV)

The thought came to me this morning that when I resist allowing God full access to every part of my heart, not just my mind; when I continue to fail to surrender some part of my desires or plans or will to His plans and His ways, then I will inevitably find myself in resistance to the passion that comes from the heart of God which is His love for me. In the Bible the same word is often used for wrath as for passion. God's passion is always completely pure whereas man's passion is corrupted with selfishness and sin. So when I refuse to allow God's pure and holy passion to take over every part of the inside of my heart and completely rule my life, then I am keeping it on the outside in the external arena. When God's passion is kept out of the heart where it really belongs, then it takes on the appearance of wrath because it is not resting where it was designed to live and thrive, in a heart. It is sort of like removing the skin from an apple and then seeing it oxidize in the air. It quickly takes on a different appearance because it is not supposed to be in that kind of environment.

When passion is out of place it always takes on incorrect attributes and causes problems. That is part of the problem with sin. Sin is getting things, even good things, all turned around and placed in wrong relationship with each other. So when I fail to obey/believe the real truth about the Son of God who is the truest revelation of the heart of God, then the passion of God that He came to place in my heart to bring me life and joy and peace remains on the outside and takes on the color of wrath instead of love.

It is then that I find that the wrath of God abides on me, not because God Himself has changed His love into anger but because my perception of His passion is transformed into believing that what I am experiencing is anger no matter what His real feelings about me are. If I don't have the passion of love in my heart then I am going to have the wrath of God on my life. It is not because God has changed His feelings toward me but that my perception of His feelings is changed in my own beliefs.

It is very clear here that the core issue is belief verses non-belief. But this issue of belief is also one of the most hijacked words in Christianity. We have externalized this word just like nearly everything else in the Bible and have come to think that it is some sort of intellectual belief that we must have in order to get saved. Some people insist that we must say certain words like a mantra in order to invoke some supernatural change that suddenly ensures us of permanent salvation. Others insist that we must add good works, penance or any number of other additional external requirements in order to convince God that we should be saved. But all of this misses the core issues involved in sin and salvation. If we don't have a proper understanding of what is really going on in the big picture we are sure to be confused about the details.

The belief that is talked about here in the books of John is a belief that is deeply rooted in the heart much more than in the head, a belief firmly experienced by the right brain and not just professed by the left. The right brain is the base of our experiential beliefs which is what really counts in life. Our professed beliefs may be ever so provable and we can spend years filling our minds with factual truths, but when a crisis comes and the pressure is on it is the deep, sub-conscious beliefs that fill our right brain, our heart, that will suddenly be exposed in the way we respond under extreme situations. And that exposure very often is a shock and surprise to most of us when it happens.

This kind of belief is also much broader than the use our western culture generally has for this word. In the Hebrew usage this word was considered to include much more than simply a belief as we think of the word. In Hebrew thought it fully embraced the idea of acting on a belief, a belief that is so real that you will always rely on it whenever making decisions or acting out externally. It is a settled belief that becomes an fundamental assumption of reality. This is the kind of belief that God is leading us back to, a life rooted in a genuine heart connection with the Source of all love and passion and truth, the kind of existence that Lucifer turned his back on in heaven and that the whole plan of salvation is designed to restore in our lives.

The exciting news here in this verse is that we do not need to wait until the Second Coming of Jesus to enter into eternal life. We can live in eternal life and assurance of faith right now when we allow God's passionate love full access to our hearts and become filled at the heart level with the kind of belief and submission to His desires that can transform us into looking and acting like Jesus. If we try any other option the results can only be the absence of eternal life which is a destiny of pain, fear, torment and death.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

Receiving What?

John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven." (John 3:27)

I would like to look at this from John's perspective. What may have been in his mind when he said these words? What was it that he did or didn't receive relative to what his disciples were talking about?

His disciples were feeling disappointment and some jealousy over the fact that Jesus was starting to get more attention and more disciples than John at this point. After being baptized by John in the Jordan, instead of becoming one of John's disciples like many other people had done, Jesus disappeared for awhile and then when He reappeared, instead of hooking up with John it appeared that He had started up a competing ministry to draw people away from John. This is easily what it might have looked like to the loyal disciples of John the Baptist.

But John would not allow that kind of self-serving thinking infect his own spirit or ministry. He viewed himself in a totally different light and his job and role from a very different perspective than most others around him. He had spent his whole life preparing for this brief and intense work of cracking open the hard hearts of God's chosen people and creating an environment more conducive for the Messiah to have access to His people. It was very clear in John's mind that he himself was not the star here and never should be. Popularity was one of the greatest desires for him and he was keen to not allow it to neutralize his real destiny as a true friend of the Bridegroom.

John demonstrated a spirit and attitude that I need to learn far more deeply. He was living in passionate devotion to God and seeking to attract as many as possible to become hungry to know God through his messages and his example without getting them too closely attached to himself in the process. It is a tricky business to draw out another's affections without succumbing to the intense temptation to have those affections become a means of making one's self feel better and enjoying them for your own self-esteem. To awaken someone else's affections for the sole purpose of then pointing them to attach them to your best friend instead of yourself is the highest form of service and dedication that can be accomplished. That is the role of a true, loyal friend.

So what was it that John received from heaven that he was referring to here? All of his popularity, all of the apparent success in his ministry by the many people who were aroused and convicted in their hearts by his straight preaching, all of the attentions and affections awakened in the hearts of people all around him were all given to him by heaven. John was in the position of a broker of sorts, a broker who dealt in hearts and souls. He was entrusted with the confidence, affections and trust of thousands of people and what he chose to do with all those valuable assets would demonstrate what kind of character he really had inside.

The more I think about this the more I realize how unqualified I have been to do this kind of work. Repeatedly throughout my life I have at times drawn out someone's affections only to have it all blow up in my face and have them turn on me unexpectedly leaving me wondering what I did wrong. Because of my own lack of a father's blessing from childhood that should have imparted to me a strong sense of identity, value, worth and confidence, I have gravitated toward trying to find value and identity in what others think of me. I have been hungry for affections while at the same time unable to receive them from those who may have wanted to give it to me properly.

When I read the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel from heaven sent to give him the blessing he craved so deeply, I see myself in stark relief. I can easily identify with Jacob's intense feelings of emptiness and longing, fear and desire, passion and yet confusion. Instead of freely accepting the hug from God that the angel was sent to deliver to him, he found himself fighting all night long against the very thing that he longed for the most while not realizing what he was doing. In essence I perceive that what he was really fighting all night was not just a stranger in the night but he was really grappling with his own confused pictures of God, his own fears, his own longings and conflicting emotions that had blocked him all his life from being able to rest in the love of His God with peace.

John the Baptist had a very different story in his life. He demonstrated what it looks like to live with purpose and passion knowing who he was and living fully within the blessing of his father's – both his earthly father and his heavenly Father. He had bold confidence to stand against all odds, to face bitter opposition, scorn and hatred from those who opposed him without flinching because he kept ever before his heart the face of the One who gave him true value and identity.

It was because of this position of confidence in who he was and how valued and cherished he was by God that he could be a safe person to handle the hearts and affections of so many people and transfer their attention away from him toward the Messiah who had come to demonstrate the original Source of all love. John's ministry was destined to pale in contrast to the vivid presentation of the love, passion and goodness of God as revealed in the life of Jesus, God's representative on earth as a human. John was sent ahead of him to awaken interest and hunger and desire in people's hearts for something much better and more satisfying than the shallow religion that they were experiencing. John was sent to awaken and intensify this hunger and then to point everyone to the only One who could satisfy that hunger effectively with a love as big as eternity itself.

So again, what did John receive from heaven? He had received the hearts and affections of the thousands who had flocked to hear him and be baptized upon the conviction of their true empty condition. He had received popularity and notoriety in order to awaken as much attention as possible for Jesus to pick up the ball and carry it from here on. John was given the privileges of being the first to touch the hearts of many but not in order to bless his own heart with their attentions but to direct their affections to the real Lover who only could ravish their hearts and fill the deepest longings of their souls.

Then he said what I believe is a very important phrase in verse 29. He who has the bride is the Bridegroom. John was not the one who could love the bride of God – the people called to be loved by God – anything like God Himself could do. A friend of the bridegroom would become a betrayer if he began to flirt with the affections of the bride for his own pleasure and misuse his advantages and the trust that the potential bride began to place in him. His role was strictly to awaken interest in the potential bride for the Bridegroom and then to introduce her to the real truth about the one who wanted to marry her. The friend's job was to sweep away the lies in the potential bride's mind about the Suitor seeking to draw her to Himself. The friends role was to help correct her mental pictures of the potential Bridegroom so that she would more readily respond to His invitations to come closer and get better acquainted with His heart.

Heaven had given John the highest honor that it can impart – a friend of God who could be trusted with the delicate and powerful emotions and affections of others for the purpose of passing them on to another without exploiting them for his own pleasure or benefit. To do this John had to constantly be aware of his true role in all of this and keep clearly in his mind and heart what his true purpose was for living. He was to receive the hearts of people awakened by God for the purpose of then connecting those hearts with the very heart of God as revealed in the person of Jesus the Messiah. In doing so his reward in place of enjoying the affections and attentions of the bride directly was the joy that he would experience as he saw the deep bonds growing between those he had attracted to be the bride and the heart of his best friend, the very Son of God. This is what he says repeatedly in the rest of verse 29.

The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled.