God's Character by Contrast

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; (Romans 1:28-31)

This is a list of opposites of God's characteristics. By analyzing the real meaning of each of these descriptions and then looking for the opposite, a picture of God emerges that is quite accurate. As well as describing the life of Jesus and His true followers, it also helps unmask the growing obscurity of some words.

Unrighteousness	Righteous
Wickedness	Holiness
Greed	Generosity
Evil	Good
Envy	Thrilled to see others succeed
Murder	Life-giving
Strife	Peace and harmony
Deceit	Truthful
Malice	Only good motives
Gossips	Love covers a multitude of sins
Slanderers	Blessing – speaking well of
Haters of God	Lover of sinners
Insolent	Polite, respectful
Arrogant	Humble
Boastful	Entrusts His witnesses (us) to vindicate Him
Inventors of evil	Good plans
Disobedient to parents	Submissive to parents
Without understanding	Full of understanding
Untrustworthy	Completely trustworthy
Unloving	Abounding in love
Unmerciful	Merciful

If you have some suggestions for better definitions of opposites in this list I would like to hear them.

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Exchange and Choices

My perceptions are changing – in more ways than one.

Part of it is due to my preparing my mind and heart for the fast upcoming date for the Bat Barakah for two of my daughters this weekend. I shared with a friend yesterday that I can't remember a period of time in my whole life that I have spent so much effort trying to listen to my heart with my mind. I find it quite frustrating at times because I am so inept at this. But I feel it is very important to try anyway if I am going to be effective as a channel for God's blessing at all. So part of my perception shift is very slowly starting to see both myself and others from more of a heart perspective than I have before. It is so incremental that most people probably can't notice it yet, but I keep praying for God to give me the eyes of heaven and the heart and feelings of Jesus and then I have to leave it up to Him to answer that request in His time and ways.

The other perception change is coming as I have spent more time than ever in the first chapter of Romans. Some time ago I left off my study of Romans in chapter eight and returned to the beginning because I just felt I had missed far too much and wanted to uncover much more that was sure to be there. So far in that experiment I have not been able to leave Romans one for maybe a week or two now and it seems to only be beginning to open up. I had a similar experience several years ago in the first few chapters of the book of John that proved a real blessing to me.

I have to say for context that Romans one and two have always been pretty depressing to me and something to get through as quick as possible so I could get on to the “good stuff” later in the book. Romans one is one of the primary sources of ammunition for those who want to fuel their bigotry and hatefulness against homosexuals. They like to thunder their human wrath against these “wicked” people and firmly attach God's name to their tirades to give it supernatural authority. This spirit of hatred and merciless vengeance is one of the prime examples of very popular lies about God deeply embedded into religion that has little hope of being eradicated. Because most people believe in a God who indulges in the same “wrath” as men are so familiar with in themselves they simply assume that these words in Romans are God vengeful outlashings against those who have offended His sovereign decrees. Of course they don't bother to continue to apply the text just as strongly to themselves as it turns the tables on them in chapter two. But that is another subject.

However, as I have spent morning after morning reviewing, exploring and meditating on the various interlinking truths just in this one chapter I have begun to see a much different picture of God emerging that is starting to get me more excited as I see the true beauty, passion and mercy of God that is quite opposite to what many claim to find there. Each morning it seems that some other word or phrase is pointed out to me that had roots and tendrils that are connected and show up in surrounding verses. These amazing interconnections become more and more fascinating as they weave together to form the outlines of a picture that more accurately portrays the real truth about God.

This morning I noticed even more references to the word “exchange” or its variants. All of them are in the section where the “wrath of God is revealed” which, when properly understood is a very exciting and liberating subject of its own. So far I have found this word in v. 23, 25, 26 and alluded to in parallel concepts in several other verses. Then I was reminded of the idea of exchange that had surprised me in a teaching several years ago from the Old Testament. There is a popularly quoted text in Isa. 40:31 that people find comfort in quoting for difficult times. “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

What surprised me was when it was pointed out that this verse actually may be saying something quite different than what it appears to say in the typical English translation. The word translated “renew” can instead be translated “exchange” which puts a whole different filter on the picture and exposes a truth about the gospel more clearly. There is even a ministry named after this verse called Exchange Life Ministry. What this text can say is that those who wait (trust patiently in God to work things out) on the Lord will exchange their strength (if you can even call it strength at all by comparison) with God's strength. The rest of the verse is simply the results that can happen in the lives of those who exchange their strength, their dependence on themselves, for trust in God and choose to live in His strength.

I find this “exchange” principle significant in the light of Romans one. It is possibly talking about the same thing in reverse. In Isaiah God's plan for exchange of the right kind is laid out and in Romans the opposite kinds of exchange are laid out with the corresponding tragic results. Given this perspective it is easier to see that the dire situations and perversions of life described are not God's “punishments” on those who have offended Him; rather they are descriptions of natural consequences of pulling away from the only source of true life and looking to any other source to get satisfaction and fulfillment.

That takes one right back into the study of worship and what it really means – but that too is a subject for another day that I have been wanting to explore much further and share what I have been learning and experiencing.

What I see in Romans one is a choice for every person: Do I believe the gospel – the good news about God and the real truth about Him apart from what is taught by most “religion” today? Or do I choose to exchange real glory for imitation glory, exchange the truth about God for the lie, or maybe even go so far as to exchange the natural function of my body for lust-filled distortions of God's original design for me and suffer the tragic consequences as some of my close friends have done?

Life is all about choices. “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.” (Deuteronomy 30:15-16)

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Righteousness Defined

If righteousness is defined in the Bible as believing that God will do what He says He will do, then does that in turn apply to God's righteousness and if so, how? Is it possible that God's righteousness is defined the same way as the Bible defines our (true) righteousness?

If that is true, then it must look something like God trusting us to do what we say we can do. (I am exploring this while I am writing so I am not currently expressing something that I have uncovered or yet understand.) That seems to be what happened in what is called the Old Covenant. The people at Mt. Sinai claimed that they would do everything that God had said they must do. It's pretty obvious that was a complete failure and disaster. But still, God acted in a way all through the centuries that could easily be seen as trusting them to do what they claimed they could do even though He knew from before the start that it was impossible for them to do it.

This thread does seem to remain consistent right on into the New Covenant but with very important alterations. It seems to me that in a New Covenant relationship with God, to be “successful” we must become completely honest and admit that we cannot live a godly life ourself. In this situation from God's perspective it would be consistent with this definition of righteousness that God could still trust us to be what we say – that is, we will be consistent with our own claims. God is trusting us to do (and not do) what we say. So when we admit and agree with God (confess) that we are completely and utterly helpless to change ourselves and live a life that measures with the life of God, then God trusts us that we are in fact what we say we are and that our lives are consistent with what we are saying.

From that point we can move to the next which is called repentance which is a gift from God. Remember, the only thing we truly can do is choose who we are to be slaves to. We will never, ever be able to live godly lives independently like Satan has led us to believe. So our only hope of escape from this body of death is to throw ourselves on the mercy of the only Source of life and exercise our will to become His love-slaves. So when we choose to receive repentance, which means a change of thinking, of direction, of heart-motives, and live in that repentance by continual surrender of our rights to ourself, then the incredible arrangement of indwelling divinity accomplished by the death and resurrection of Jesus for this very purpose is installed in our soul and a new life is experienced within.

From this position we move on to an experience that theologians call “sanctification” which has its own hazards of misunderstanding. Very many people who seem to “get it right” up to this point fall into Old Covenant thinking at this stage and end up right back in the mire of struggle, defeat and “works religion” that plagues anyone attempting this route. It also puts God in the position, according to application of the above definition of righteousness, of trusting us to do the impossible which is just as impossible now as it was in Old Testament days. In essence, we are putting God in a terrible situation when we believe that we can be “good” through any efforts of our own, even when those efforts are supposedly combined with “help” from God.

In the experience of sanctification we must continue to remain in the same relationship with God as we did when we first came to Him for justification and trusted Him fully to apply the merits of Jesus to our lives in place of our sin and guilt. Sanctification is not discovering new formulas that will now enable us to live perfect lives with help from God. Sanctification is living in total consciousness of our continuing utter inability to live “right” at all from any of our own strength and instead resting fully in the resurrection power of an indwelling Divinity gifted to us in Jesus Christ. It is learning to live from the heart Jesus gives us.

When we live in that kind of relationship with God, then His trust in us to do what we say we can do – which is nothing but choose to allow Him to do what He says He can do in us – is a revelation of His righteousness. This is the gospel, the good news that Paul preached and was so pumped up about. This also allows the same definition of righteousness that is used by the Bible to equally apply both us and to God.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH." (Romans 1:16-17)

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