Believing and Consequences

No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. (Romans 4:20-25 NRSV)

As I saw these words on one of my walls earlier today it connected with my ongoing pursuit of understanding this thing John talks about so much in his writings – what it means to believe in Jesus and in the Father.

He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18)

I am perceiving that understanding the true meaning and nature of the kind of belief that Jesus talks about is an extremely large undertaking. The simplistic explanations of what it means to believe by many religious exporters falls far short of the deep heart involvement that God has in mind when it comes to believing in a way that is really meaningful. I really want to not only know what it means to believe with my mind but far more urgently I want to experience what I am learning about in this area.

Abraham encountered and experienced this thing called belief in such a way that God made him a prime exhibit of what He wants all of us to do in relationship to His words. The Bible says that Abraham believed in such a way that the result was an accounting of righteousness on his behalf, whatever that really means. And it seems to mean, besides maybe a lot of other things, that he and God became very connected in a mutual trust and love relationship at the heart level. That is certainly something that I need to experience much deeper myself.

I remember when these passages about Abraham were first pointed out to me a number of years ago. It startled me that belief and righteousness were described in this way – simply believing that God can and wants to do what He says He can do in our lives. James talks about this from a different angle and emphasizes that if Abraham had not taken action on his belief ideas that they would have been useless and lifeless. That describes much of the belief and faith that is promoted today. But that was not the main problem I grew up with. My culture emphasized belief as a very high priority in religious experience but without the focus on a personal relationship with God. It was belief in a set of doctrines and rules more than anything else.

As a result, there grew up around those rigid teachings a whole lot more rules that were supposedly designed to help us keep those “truths” from being contaminated or violated. This is exactly what the Jews had done by the time Jesus arrived on the scene and yet we today still cannot see the strong correlation between what we are doing and what they did back then. It is amazing how self-deception can keep millions of people oblivious to the presence of lies and false assumptions that govern every aspect of the life. I am no exception to this problem either.

What I find compelling in looking at these two passages together is what is involved in the belief described here in Romans and then how a failure to enter into that kind of belief will inevitably produce judgment in one's life. I feel I need to revisit my own comments about this passage that I wrote during my intensive study of the book of Romans and remind myself of what God was showing me about this verse. I feel I could really benefit from comparing those notes with the implications that relate to understanding judgment better in relation to these verses in John 3.

As I look at this again this passage in Romans seems to say to me that I will be filled/covered/accounted with righteousness (the essence of what God is) whenever I believe what is described next. And there is a great deal described in this passage that upon close examination is often not what we assume it says.

First of all, this belief is directed toward the Father God, not just Jesus Himself. That is very easily missed in a quick reading of this verse but is very clear upon close observation of what the words literally say. ...believe in Him who raised Jesus. This again reminds me that the main reason that Jesus came to live and die was to change our minds and opinions about God, not to change His feelings about us in the slightest. The whole Trinity loves us in unison with love that is unquenchable and will never cease. They are all in perfect agreement in their desire to save us from the lies about Them that sin has poisoned us with and that prevents us from trusting Them in faith.

The only way that I can come into a saving faith relationship with God is to first begin to have my perceptions of God changed. I simply cannot produce trust in anyone that I cannot see good reasons to trust, not at least at the heart level. Ironically I actually violate that statement much of the time by trusting my heart to humans who have never earned my trust simply because they look good or have fooled me into believing they won't hurt me. Part of the insanity of sin and its effect on our psyche is that we too easily trust the untrustworthy here on earth while we uniformly seem unable to trust the only One who really is trustworthy because of the lies about Him that are embedded so deeply into our hearts.

The last two items listed in this passage from Romans have great significance that is also easily overlooked. We talk a great deal in various ways about Jesus being handed over for our sins, but there is so much in that phrase that completely flies right over our heads and never connects. I don't have time here to go into all of them but again I believe that I may have tried to unpack at least some of this in my previous notes when I studied this much more some time ago.

The second phrase, was raised for our justification, is even more startling and misunderstood. This too I remember dwelling on in my previous notes and I remember how surprised I was when I first saw this. It really challenges me to examine closely what I believe about what Jesus really did for me on the cross and for me to take a hard look at the many questionable assumptions about the cross contained in most of the teachings of religion along this line.

But part of what I am seeing today is the connections between properly believing these truths in relationship to what Jesus did for me and the presence of judgment referred to in John 3. This judgment is not an imposed, arbitrary condemnation type of judgment inflicted on anyone who refuses to believe things the way God insists we must. This is a judgment – an exposing of the heart – that is a natural consequence that results from the outgrowth of what I have chosen to believe about both the Father and about Jesus and His death on the cross for me.

This is really a warning to me to be very careful about swallowing the typical jargon and assumptions about the cross that swirl around in religious teachings today. Most of what I hear about the cross of Christ is tainted with false assumptions about what it really meant and is almost consistently based on terrible assumptions about the Father and His supposed animosity toward sinners. When the cross is seen in the light of Jesus placating an angry Father to any degree, then that belief is dangerously laced with deadly poisonous lies about God that must be avoided at all costs. That kind of thinking and believing is not a saving faith but is the kind of belief that will produce negative judgment in the heart and life.

This can help to explain why most of Christianity today is so full of condemnation, fear and confusion. It is because nearly all of our teachings about the Father and about the cross of Christ is founded upon false beliefs about how God feels toward us and how He implements salvation and even what those words mean in the first place. There seems to be more confusion, darkness and distortions about the cross of Jesus Christ and what it means for sinners than there is about anything else in the Bible.

But that should come as no surprise, for Satan is intent on keeping us from knowing the real truth about God in any way possible. And the focal point of his plans to keep us in darkness is to promote lies about God that will attack the plainest demonstration of love this universe has ever witnessed. In the ways that we usually present the cross we actually endorse many of the lies of Satan and weave them into our explanations of what was going on there which in turn weakens our faith instead of strengthening it. What is truly amazing is that in spite of all these fierce attempts by demons and sinners to obscure the truth about God through religion, through blatant lies or by any other means, the incredible love of God and the truth about Him is simply so big and powerful and unstoppable that it continues to leak around and through all the barricades of lies, distortions and perversions of the reality of God's positive attitude towards us.

It is at this juncture that we find this verse in John applicable. This is where each one of us finds ourselves looking into the measuring mirror of truth. When we come to begin to perceive some of the real truth about God's attitude towards us as described here in John 3, it is then that our deeper motives and attitudes begin to be exposed. It is here that we either are confronted with our love for darkness or can see more clearly that what we really desire is to grow closer to the light of the truth about God. The real core issue that is the pivotal point of destiny here is whether we are willing to be exposed and healed by the light of truth about God that will continue to challenge and often shatter our preconceptions about reality and God or whether we will insist on clinging to our fears and assumptions about God and His supposed anger towards us.

If we choose to remain in the darkness of false assumptions about God after seeing the truth as it is in Jesus, the consequences of that choice always results in more darkness, increased condemnation, reduced ability to embrace repentance and reduced ability to feel convicted by the Spirit of God. As this condition intensifies by repeated resistance to the real truth about God, we will find it easier to believe our lies, our false systems of belief about Him, our false constructs of religious explanations about the cross and God's wrath and all sorts of other religious-sounding topics. All of this religion will lead us to believe that we are in fact living in increased light while in reality our hearts are being shrouded in darkness and are becoming hardened against the gentle voice of a compassionate Father pleading with us through His Spirit to believe in Him.

If I am unwilling to believe in the scandalous-sounding mercy, grace and compassion of the Father; if I am unwilling to believe that the Father loves me exactly like the Son does; if I believe that Jesus was appeasing an angry God when He died on the cross instead of exposing the intense passionate love of the Father to me, then the effect of that belief will keep my mind in darkness and will produce judgment and condemnation in my heart that will prevent me from being able to trust this God who desires to save me from the destructive lies about Him that infect my soul.

But if I allow the real truth about God to cut through my traditions, upset my life-long assumptions and the religious teachings I have embraced all of my life; if I allow my mind and heart to open up to radical new impressions and emotions and ideas about what God is really like and give Him permission to reveal Himself to me personally, then it will become evident that my motives are inspired by the Spirit of God and that I am being drawn to a Light that is different than what I have ever believed before.