That the World May Know

My mind has been taken on a number of interesting and seemingly disparate paths this morning with rather interesting results. I even found myself exploring connections throughout the Bible in the word Gog and the implications that search I marked in my Bible. But what began my interesting voyage that took me all over the place was a choice to revisit this verse:

I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. (John 14:30-31)

I have taken a close look at this verse in the past, but as is often the case I have learned that coming back to a passage over and over again never fails to be rewarded with inspiring new revelations waiting to be discovered and applied. So I let my heart and mind work together to see where the Spirit might lead today and ended up doing a word search on the phrase 'may know'.

What came up on the computer from all over the Bible were fascinating references, mostly having to do with various ways that the world would know that God is who He really is. One of my favorite verses that showed up was this one:

Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. Consider too, that this nation is Your people. ( Exodus 33:13)

Another one that I just couldn't pass up was this next one:

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of disciples, that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens me morning by morning, He awakens my ear to listen as a disciple. (Isaiah 50:4)

Both of these were a real encouragement for me as I have found myself sharing life lessons and suggestions with some who have asked me to be their friend. I find this a very hazardous venture for it is so easy to allow pride or earthly wisdom to contaminate the heart and tempt me to think that this wisdom is my own when in reality it is simply a very tenuous gift to be used carefully with full credit always to be given to the original Owner. Even as this verse points out explicitly, it is God who gives the ability to speak, to write, to know the right words, and only as I stay closely connected to Him and listen with a humble, teachable spirit myself can I enjoy a relationship that allows Him to make me a channel of grace for others.

But back to the passage where Jesus said that the world would know He loves the Father. I have long found it curious, almost strange, that the logic that He gives, the answer He says that will convince the world of His love for the Father is that He obeys His Father's commands all the time. Why was it important to Jesus that the world should believe that He loves the Father? What is the key things I need to perceive in this unusual verse?

This reminds me about how His true disciples throughout all history have perceived and related to God's commandments. The very word 'commandments' too often has very dark resonance with many of us. That is why I find this verse so compelling and feel a need to keep coming back to it to discover deeper truths that can set me completely free of these dark associations that have discouraged me for so many years.

Jesus is saying that keeping His Father's commands is how the world will know conclusively that He loves the Father. This of course is closely associated with similar statements about how we will relate to Him and to His commandments as well.

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. (John 14:15-17)

I like how Jesus knew that this reference to commandment-keeping might trigger some of us with fear. So He immediately added the secret to how our reactions could be changed about this. He promised that He would send a Helper to abide with us and be in us. And what is the main purpose for this? He helps us by working from within our own heart to empower us to keep His commandments naturally.

But how do our negative feelings associated with this word 'commandments' become transformed into positive motivation? It is through coming to see the true nature of His commandments and the true nature of the God that is asking us to do this; we begin to see that Jesus is inviting us into the circuit of life which circulates the currency of life-producing love throughout all of creation. We are to be restored back to our original design where we receive love and life for the purpose of passing it on to others, not to hoard it or take it from others for ourselves.

So many of us have become severely bogged down with the negative feelings that have been connected to the word 'commandments'. This is one of the successful schemes of Satan to keep us away from the very thing that we need in order to thrive. But what we need is not more forced obedience to a list of rules, for that only produces death as Paul so eloquently explains. Rather, we need to come to see God's commandments as expressions of the natural principles of reality which are all designed to circulate the life-giving essence of God's family – agape love.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (John 13:34)

This verse can sometimes be manipulated in our confusion to disconnect Jesus and love from the commands of God. But our problem is not the commands of God different from Jesus, for God is exactly like Jesus. Indeed, the New Testament reveals that the God of the Old Testament is actually the very same person as Jesus but before He became a human on this planet. Rather than confusing ourselves about supposed differences between various laws or differing Gods, we have to begin to see that everything connected with God is also immersed in love; for God is love.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (1 John 1:5; 3:11)

The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. (1 John 2:6-7)

John is trying to get it past our fear-based thinking that all the commandments of God revolve around love. The reason that Jesus had to state that His commandment sounded new is not because it conflicts with the Old Testament descriptions of how a godly person would live but because we have become so blinded to the nature of God and His commandments that Jesus had to reset our thinking and explicitly tell us that His commands are all about love.

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3)

The reason that His commandments are not burdensome is not because Jesus commandments are different but because of the approach to them that He revealed and demonstrated in His own life. Instead of perceiving God's commandments as demands to be achieved in order to be accepted and loved by God, Jesus showed us that these commands can simply be fruit growing naturally in the lives of all who allow His Spirit to abide in them, bringing the very presence of Jesus and the Father right into their very center.

He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.

If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. (John 14:21, 23)

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. (John 15:10)

Why am I dwelling on this? Because I need to absorb it into myself maybe more than many others. My own heart has struggled for so many years to believe that I am loved, that God actually cares about me more than looking to condemn or judge me. It is one thing for my head to embrace tons of truth that God has been sharing with me over the years, and I am very grateful for all of that for it has allowed me to see the path for my heart to experience all that I am learning about this objectively. But what I really want is far more than simply head knowledge. I also want to be a credible witness in favor of God whenever His reputation is on trial. I need a deeper experiential relationship with Him where my life, my face, my tone of voice, my gut-level reactions when I am abused or maligned – I need to have this kind of love secured in the center of my own being so that its fruit can spill out all over others just like Jesus experienced.

This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

This I command you, that you love one another. (John 15:12, 17)

The more I look into this the more it becomes apparent that God is trying to reconnect the emotional wiring inside my head to help me to see that these two seemingly incompatible words actually are tightly connected as long as I am willing to approach them with the right perception of how He feels about me.

On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining. (1 John 2:8)

So, what is it? Is this a new commandment or is it an old commandment? It can be very confusing to the logical mind that has been trained by culture to accept only one right answer. But in reality the truthful answer is 'yes'. What is going on is that the only reason it is new is because it is a new discovery for those of us who could never see love in God's commandments before because they had been so obscured by our legal way of thinking that darkened our hearts with fear instead of the light of love. But the more I have come to see God from my heart and mind in a radically new perspective over the past few years, the more I am beginning to see outlines of a beauty and attraction that was impossible to detect before.

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. (1 John 2:3)

To my own amazement, over the past few years I have begun to sense a new awakening far down somewhere inside of me that is beyond my conscious reach. As my measurement standards of what constitutes a real Christian have been challenged repeatedly and exchanged for new and very different ways of perceiving, I have begun to experience a kind of natural obedience that I could hardly even imagine in my past. Rather than working hard to obey because of fear of what would happen to me if I didn't, I now find myself compulsively wanting to discover more and more exciting things about this God who is increasingly becoming attractive to my heart. And the more I spend time and invest mental energy seeking to know the real truth about Him behind all the facades and confusion from religion and expostulations by many claiming to represent Him, I find that my impulses and desires and feelings about others and about many activities in my life are slowly being transformed. I suppose that might be what John was talking about – we know that we have come to know...

This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. (1 John 3:23-24)

Without the Spirit of love given as the Helper to bring spontaneous love from within our own heart, it is impossible to live in a relationship with God that produces natural obedience. This is what I needed to know 40 years ago and failed to grasp. And because it has taken me so long to begin to experience what my heart has craved all of these years, I become very excited when I see younger people taking hold of these truths and embracing and experiencing them much sooner than I did.

But I am also thrilled when I see older people, much older than I am even, who likewise are grasping these truths about God that have eluded them for so long. They become willing to humble themselves and be teachable even by younger people so that they too begin to experience this love that makes them come alive and know real joy for the first time in their lives. As both young and old become willing to cast aside all of the tradition and prejudice and preconceived ideas and misapprehensions about God that have locked us in fear for so many years, we are starting to see the fulfillment of that exciting prophecy that reveals part of what will bring about the close of this terrible experiment of sin.

Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:4-6)

As our hearts become one and we begin to experience the natural unity that only come about as each of us focuses on the character of God as revealed in the life of Jesus, we begin to experience that different kind of life that Jesus was so excited to share with us.

And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:20, 13)

This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. (John 17:3)

Pruning

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. (John 15:1-3; 11-12)

I have never been real comfortable with the idea of being pruned. My mind imagines pruning shears painfully cutting some part of me off which doesn't sound very pleasant. It sounds like taking part of me away, maybe even part of my identity which sort of feels like a threat to me. I understand the concept of pruning, that excess limbs can waste life energy of the plant and that old limbs can suck the life away from more productive parts of the tree or vine.

But still, most people just don't feel attracted to having something cut off of them even though logically they may accept that it is necessary. We feel like everything we have belongs to us for a reason and we don't like pain. Some of us become so afraid of pain that we will do nearly anything to avoid pain even if we know that not taking painful steps will result in even greater pain in the future. We are hard-wired to want comfort now even if it means we will have far less comfort down the road. Our addiction to comfort can become very self-destructive as any addict might be able to relate to you.

As I meditated on these verses this morning my mind was drawn to this phrase because of the word which I have spoken to you. That is interesting. How can words prune me? What was Jesus saying here in this metaphor that I need to understand and experience in my own life?

I look at the cross-reference I had at some point put beside this verse. My Bible is full of these. It led me down the page to verse 11 where again Jesus refers to things He has said to them. As usual I begin to compare these two verses to see what God might want to share with my heart. What can I take in today from the life-giving words of Jesus for me personally? How might I embrace what He says so that useless or even damaging parts of me will be pruned and more fruit can be produced in me too?

In the margin note in verse 3 I see the substitute for the word clean can be pruned. You are already pruned because of the word which I have spoken to you. That is interesting. Jesus seemed to believe that what they had already heard from Him had had its intended effect, at least to some extent.

But this is a bit baffling for me when I think about the state of mind that I assume these disciples might have given the descriptions of their infighting and pride and selfishness coming into the upper room. Has their attitude changed that dramatically over the past hour or two that Jesus has spent with them? Did His washing their feet, sharing bread and juice with them and talking about His plans and their future together really make that much difference in their mindset? According to this statement it appears something significant must have taken place adjusting their attitudes and affecting their spirit. Are they now capable of bearing more fruit than they were coming into this evening?

I move down to the next text I have referenced from the first one. Immediately I notice a buzz word that has caught my interest for years ever since I learned its true definition from Dr. Wilder. This is a word that for many years had little meaning to me and almost no connecting point in my heart. Joy. I used to wonder just what this might feel like. I was pretty certain I had never experienced it. Oh, I had been happy at times. But I sensed that this word joy was in another league and that it should not be cheapened to be defined as simply happiness like many have assumed. Because of this I held out for a better explanation of this word which was many years in coming.

I don't want to go into that in depth here, but I have unpacked that elsewhere at great length including a personal and very painful story of a day in my life that was one of the most traumatic days I have ever experienced. Burned deep into the memory of that horrific day and night is a riveting experience of joy that had nothing at all to do with happiness. That experience dramatically helped me to understand much more clearly what joy really is and how it can exist no matter what other intense emotions one may be feeling at the time.

Now I find myself pondering why Jesus is talking about Joy in connection with the things He has spoken. He expands my attention by talking both about His joy and our joy. He is saying that in some way His joy can be in me that will make my joy full. That sounds very tantalizing. No, that is too ineffective to express the intensity that I feel in these words. Full joy seems beyond my ability to even comprehend; yet at the same time it is something which I intuitively sense I was created to live in more than I am currently capable of appreciating.

Here Jesus is again talking about how His words can transform and improve me in some way. How might this be connected to pruning? And fruit? I remember that joy is one of the facets of fruit described in Galatians. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23) Notice that the word fruit is in the singular. That means that these are not fruits as in disconnected from each other but are different facets or descriptions of one thing. And according to this verse it is the Spirit that grows this fruit in me, not something I have to do. According to what Jesus said in the first part, I have to be connected to Him securely if I want to see this fruit appear in my life. It is not something He insists I have to produce but is simply a natural outgrowth of having a vital connection with Him.

This just keeps expanding as I ponder these words in their context. The next verse Jesus brings up that dreaded word commandment which for too many years had a lot of negativism for my heart. But the more I come to know the truth about God the less this word disturbs me now. Jesus and John seemed to have a strikingly different feeling about this word than I have had for much of my life. I want to resonate with this word more like I do with the word love. Here Jesus seems to think they are inextricably linked together. That is interesting – even compelling.

Pruning. Fruit. Abiding. Much fruit. My words abide in you. Abide in my love. Joy. Commandments. Love one another.

As I scan down through the page containing these verses I see the pattern emerging. I sense a new flavor from the gospel, the good news about what God is really like. I sense a further awakening of my heart again as it is slowly healing from the damage of my past.

My heart was designed for this. I was not made to live in fear but in joy, love and peace. I want this. I crave this. I long for this to be a description of my life. I want to be so filled with these things that others will become jealous and hungry and will feel compelled to ask how they can have it too.

Love and Sacrifice

I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here. (John 14:30-31)

I love it when a plan comes together. That is a saying that I hear sometimes when people's plans work out just the way they want that pleases them. But in this case I love it when I begin to see obvious providences that remind me that the really good plans are those that God has for me that often I know nothing about until they come into my view. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV)

When I begin to notice how God prearranges events, conversations, articles or talks to come into my life at just the right time to emphasize some truth or reality that He desires for me to notice, I am sometimes surprised but most of all appreciation is awakened and I feel more motivated to want to know Him even more deeply. Over the past few years, things that He has been sharing with me, both for my head and my heart, have served to bring life-changing truths about the nature of His consistent love in sharp contrast with nearly everything I thought about Him in my past. As each new revelation emerges from the fog of confusion that obscures the truth about His character, I see how beautifully everything fits together and reinforces each other which only serves to intensify the light of His glory.

The verse I am looking at today is just such an example. As is often the case, it contains one of those puzzling phrases that I have generally brushed past in my reading because I simply could not find a good place to fit it into my concepts about truth. Though it has not been as troubling as some passages can be, at the same time it seemed to not be nearly so compelling as much of the other material in the surrounding context until this morning. Some things just seem to be redundant or fill-in material until their real significance suddenly emerges when the right light is present.

Enter the providence of God to prepare me to see much more significance in this verse. In the last couple weeks I have become engaged in some intense but enjoyable discussions with a visitor who has started coming to our church. We have spent several hours exploring various aspects of truth that have been coming alive for me over recent years but that are relatively new and different for him. Our discussions have been positive and sometimes rapidly move from one subject to another in his eagerness to try to make sense of so many new concepts. But at the end of each discussion thus far he has challenged me to help make sense out of the concept of where sacrifice fits in to everything we are learning about the true character of God.

At first I didn't understand his confusion about sacrifice and tried to explain to him as best I could how I saw it. But he kept pressing the point and wanted to know why there is such insistence in the Bible of the need for blood if the core issue of sin is not a legal problem demanding punishment. This belief in the need for punishment is the core issue that is polarizing much of the Christian community these days and that is becoming sharpened in my own thinking. How do you fit together the many references to sacrifice and blood throughout Scripture with our emerging picture of a God who has no interest in appeasement but rather is passionate to reestablish a relationship of trust and love with His children again? This fundamental dispute is at the heart of why many people find it very difficult to embrace new ideas about God that do not satisfy the traditional views of religion and beliefs about the nature of sin and a just God.

Enter another providence of God with perfect timing. I just started reading a book that is already proving to be a tremendous help in clarifying a number of these issues in my thinking. Now I want to be clear that I don't believe in being an unthinking reflector of anyone's opinions. But at the same time when a person has a right spirit and what they are teaching is consistent with the many things God has already been showing us in His Word, I am willing to consider their explanations and see if God may be using them to help me go even deeper in my understanding of His truth. In this case that appears to once again be the case. So far nearly everything I have read is helping to clarify and solidify truths that are already taking root in my thinking and that are consistent with the emerging theme that God is love; God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. (1 John 4:16; 1:5)

Given the pattern I have observed over a number of years now of how God has things waiting to answer my needs before I even realize I have them, it came as little surprise that I began to read in this book clear explanations of the very issue that this visitor has raised. I wouldn't have even given it much thought myself since this was not a burning issue in my own mind. But because someone else has brought up an issue that I do not yet have a satisfying answer for, my interest is now peaked to pay closer attention as God has brought a valuable resource to help me understand something I need to know. The very next chapter that I began to read in this book is titled “Loving Sacrifice” and leads into wonderful explanations of this very issue.

What I am in the process of discovering is vitally important and thrilling as well. And as I am learning more about this topic it gave me the needed context to alert me to the significance of the verse quoted here at the beginning, so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.

Now, I probably don't have time here to fully unpack what I am in the process of learning about this. But I will try to condense it enough to hopefully make sense and then urge you to look into this issue more carefully yourself in the light of the real truth about God's character of pure agape love. But so far what has really grabbed my attention from what is emerging in this book and that correlates perfectly with what I have been learning from the Word of God is how the Old Testament sacrificial system relates to the sacrifice of Jesus.

This brings in another passage that was even more puzzling for me up to this point. Take a look at this and see how these passages begin to complement and even reinforce each other.

For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, "SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME; IN WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE TAKEN NO PLEASURE. "THEN I SAID, 'BEHOLD, I HAVE COME (IN THE SCROLL OF THE BOOK IT IS WRITTEN OF ME) TO DO YOUR WILL, O GOD.'" After saying above, "SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS AND WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, NOR HAVE YOU TAKEN PLEASURE in them" (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, "BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL." He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:1, 4-10)

To merge one more factor in, a couple days ago in prayer meeting someone else brought up a serious question about another verse that I now see ties directly into this issue and is reflected in this passage from Hebrews. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5 NIV) They were asking an excellent question that was not easy to answer: how does this really work? What does it really mean practically that His wounds heal us? There is certainly no shortage of religious clichés to throw at someone about this, but like this man raising the question, I too would like to make more sense out of this text.

But here is where the conflict begins. If one chooses to embrace the commonly accepted belief that God the Father must be appeased, that His justice demands punishment for sin because He is so offended by sin that nothing else will satisfy Him but blood, then this whole question about sacrifice does not create any tension. It is simply assumed that in some way the death of Jesus was a substitute punishment to create a loophole by which sinners can be saved without being punished themselves.

But there are huge problems with this rationale, not the least of which is the fact that such logic is actually 'legal fiction'. Even in our diminished perceptions of justice this practice simply would not be tolerated in a criminal court of law. That in itself should raise a red flag, for God will never participate in deception or dishonesty which is exactly what this penal substitution teaching relies on to hold it together. In addition, it simply makes no sense that if God demands payment for sin that He could pay Himself. As the author of the book I am reading put it, you can no more appease or bribe yourself than you can steal from yourself. (Healing the Gospel p. 32) If God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself on the cross, then it simply makes no logical sense to claim that He was being paid off in order to make Him able to forgive our sins. The more I think about these commonly accepted teachings the more illogical they appear.

But if the penal substitution, justice satisfaction theories don't hold water – and in my growing understanding they cannot – then how are we to understand the purpose of all the sacrifices in the Old Testament system that God Himself put into place? And how does this all fit the way we see the sacrifice of Jesus? This has been a question in my own mind as well as with many others who are wrestling with these concepts and trying to see how they all fit together without twisting logic to force things to fit. I now realize I should thank the visitor who brought this to my attention, for I can see that he was sent by God to make me aware of my own need to look more closely into this issue.

What is now becoming clearer to me is what is found in this passage from Hebrews. I have not seen it previously mostly because I have not looked at this with enough other pieces of information in place to see what it was really saying. But here is the core issue which suddenly came over me in the light from everything else I have been learning about God recently. The most important part about Jesus coming to this world was not the fact that He died but was the in His living and how sinners reacted to His love. Hebrews states clearly here that He takes away the first in order to establish the second.

I had always assumed that what He took away was the animal part of the sacrificial system by replacing it with the sacrifice of His own human body. But now I am starting to see that this is not at all what this passage in Hebrews is saying. What is being revealed here is that the whole idea of sacrifice itself was in essence a sort of shorthand for something far more significant about Jesus and had nothing to do with appeasement of a desire for blood on the part of God. That kind of thinking drives a wedge between the Son and the Father that is promoted by the great accuser but has no place in the heart of a true Christ-follower. Jesus did not come to appease an offended, angry God but rather came to explicitly reveal the heart of a passionate, loving God longing to change our minds about Him so He can once again bring us back into an intimacy of close fellowship with Him that has been missing for 6,000 years.

So what is it that Hebrews says replaced the sacrificial system altogether? Jesus, the one being referred to here, said that it was His purpose to do God's will. It was not God's will that Jesus be offered as a substitute punishment through some sort of legal fiction to satisfy His alleged fury against sinners. That itself is one of the most satanic lies promoted by popular religion that must be exposed and expelled. What it says here in Hebrews is that Jesus came to do the Father's will, and the Father, just like the Son, is pure, agape love. The will of love is to love, to demonstrate what love looks like, to reveal the truth about love that has been obliterated by myriads of lies from the accuser and promulgated by most all religions throughout history. Love is what love does and living a loving life is the ultimate will of the great Lover.

So, what does love look like lived out? That is what Jesus' life was all about. He did not just come to reveal love to the world in person but also came to convince us that the Father is exactly like the Son – total love and nothing else. This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5) This verse has been hammering itself into my thinking for several weeks now as I am starting to see the enormous significance it has on how I view the big picture of sin and salvation.

So, the real reason why Jesus came to this earth, contrary to the emphasis that religion has placed on His death, is really the demonstration of love that He gave us throughout His life. Then why did Jesus die if it was not intended as a sacrifice of appeasement to satisfy wrath of an offended God? Jesus died because sinners were so hateful, resentful and filled with wrath in reaction to that pure love that they had to kill Him to escape the suffering they experienced in His presence. The atmosphere of love that surrounded Jesus was a constant source of extreme irritation to all who were unwilling to submit to its drawing influence. So what resulted was that His death became the inevitable evidence of God allowing sinners to have their way with the Personification of all love. Rather than the lies that have been used to terrify people into embracing religion warning of what might happen when sinners fall into the hands of an angry God, the reality that was demonstrated in Jesus torture and death was what happens when a loving God falls into the hands of angry sinners. That is the essence of what Hebrews is trying to convey.

The more I learn about this and the more my heart perceives these emerging revelations about God's passionate love for me, the more I find myself responding spontaneously with growing affection for Him. This is so opposite of the inner terror that I grew up with ever perceiving God as an angry, offended deity constantly holding me under a heavy blanket of condemnation and guilt in order to force me to obey Him or else. For some time as I began to emerge out from under that heavy, suffocating view of God, I was very angry that I had spent so many years of my life suffering under these lies.

But now I feel myself starting to move to another stage moving from resentment toward compassion for those still stifled and living under constant fear like I suffered from for so long. And though they are usually very defensive about their fear-based beliefs about God, I can recognize those reactions as typical symptoms of starvation for love. The human heart was never designed by God to live close to Him motivated by fear but only in mutual love and joy. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (1 John 4:18)

Now I want to be so transformed in this love myself that God can begin to use me more effectively to help others escape the trap of Satan's lies about Him and begin to see and experience for themselves the love found in the real truth about God that can deliver them from the terrible slavery of fear.

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2:14-15 NKJV)

Overcoming Faith

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith. (1 John 5:4)

Our faith. That brings up disturbing memories of one of the many mistaken views in religion that confused my thinking growing up. Like so many around me, I thought that faith was something that I had to work up enough until it was finally sufficient to get God to answer my prayers. I was told that faith was belief, so after trying to reason this out strenuously I decided that the only faith that would move God to act for me must be believing so hard that there would be no trace of doubt left anywhere in my mind. But of course the way our mind is designed that is impossible. So once again I began to suspect that this was yet another scheme of God to prevent me from quite achieving the blessings and experience the victories that I so desired.

Did I grow up with dark views about God's intentions toward me? Yes I did. And looking back on how much I secretly resented God keeping these tantalizing promises just slightly out of my reach, I shudder at how much my thinking affected the way I talked about God to those around me. My religion revolved around trying to develop a perfect character in preparation for entrance into heaven. That is what I was taught I was supposed to do. Of course everyone knew that we cannot develop such a character on our own so my prayers (compulsive, obsessive and almost non-stop every waking minute of my life) were sprinkled generously with 'help me!' petitions meant to compel God to give me enough power to overcome temptations. That is a whole different story that I have shared at other times, but this verse reminds me of my journey toward understanding clearer truth about this word 'faith'.

As I just began to type that last word faith, the auto-word feature on my computer offered up the word faithfulness as a suggestion. I find it interesting how this feature on my computer can at times influence the direction of my thoughts with suggestive and even unexpected words. In this case that word is exactly the truth that began to finally dawn on me as the key to my dilemma. It took many years of wearing frustration and unanswered prayers and searching for better explanations before I finally began to realize that it is not my faith that has to be worked up with my effort. What is needed is for me to spend far more time dwelling on the evidences of His faithfulness. I know that may sound like an avoidance of the real issue. But as more time goes by I realize that true faith has little to do with what I can force myself to produce through mental gymnastics but everything to do with a natural, spontaneous response from discovering how good and faithful and kind God is towards me. (Romans 2:4)

The word in this verse – overcome – is closely linked in my memories to the heaviness of condemnation that weighed my heart down for many years and nearly extinguished all hope. Overcoming sin was at the center of all my religious attention as I attempted for many years to perfect holiness, live sanctification, overcome temptations and any number of other familiar religious expressions that all have to do with what was expected of me to be saved in heaven at last. I must be careful here to not imply that my parents or teachers had a diabolical plot to discourage me with perfectionism; I am sure that was not the case. They were only doing the best they knew how and many were likely also struggling in their own lives trying to figure out salvation themselves. Most of them I am sure were simply repeating the religious clichés that they had learned as formulas kept getting passed around and around like so many traditions.

But in my own experience it felt like I was at the small end of a funnel of a concentration of legalism, perfectionism and works. At the same time I had a very weak understanding and appreciation of things like grace, forgiveness and love. All of this combined to discourage and depress me and even produced the heart of a rebel in me. I see now that this has been the scheme of Satan ever since sin entered this world, to prevent people from knowing the incredible goodness, kindness and love of God that can set us free from all of these lies. I do not want to place the blame on the humans in my life from which I inherited all of these dark views of God, because our fight is not against flesh and blood but against supernatural dark forces fully intent on obscuring every truth about God from our hearts.

I do not wish to dwell too long on the darkness that has marked so much of my past. But that is the context from which my current perspective has been shaped. I find myself comparing the glory that is starting to emerge now with the darkness from which I am emerging as it sharpens my own appreciation of how good God really is.

I am amazed, humbled and thrilled as I see the increasing freedom and inner peace that I now enjoy deep inside in stark contrast to the fear and dread that verses like this used to produce in me. I still have a long ways to go, because the pervasiveness of these dark ideas about God so saturated every corner of my thinking that I still continually find them lurking behind dark corners and jumping out at me at unexpected times. I sometimes question whether I am really born again or not. But even in the face of that uncertainty I have learned to place that issue in God's hands and trust His work in my heart to follow the schedule He has for my healing.

This is not at all what I intended to write about when I began this. Maybe it is too easy for me to focus on my own experience instead of on the exciting things I am seeing about Him in the Word. At any rate, let me get back to what I first noticed as I meditated on these verses and see what else might emerge.

The first thing I saw here besides the fact that it is faith that overcomes, was the contrast between the beginning of this verse and the next one.

Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:5)

In the previous verse the subject is a what. But here in this next verse is shifts to a who. In fact, just at this moment it is breaking through to me what John might be trying to say here. Faith is the what that overcomes the world, but real faith that overcomes is a faith that is born of God, not something contrived by me Of course faith cannot even exist outside of a person so when a person allows their heart and mind to catch enough vision of the glory of what God is really like and allows their heart to respond, the inevitable will be saving, living faith or belief in how good and trustworthy God really is.

It is becoming more and more clear to me over the past few years that the kind of faith that I need to prepare me to live in God's intense presence is a confident trust in the pure reality of His extreme love. My heart must be transformed to reflect that love and to let go of every belief about Him that is tainted with darkness. This is precisely why Satan has done anything and everything possible to insinuate subtle or not so subtle accusations and lies about what God is like into every aspect of our thinking. He knows better than any other being in the universe how dangerous it is to be in the presence of the Almighty if thee is any trace of doubt or unbelief about His goodness and purity and passionate love. It is not God that we need to be afraid of as Satan has asserted, for in God there is never any thought to hurt or punish or inflict suffering on His children. Rather it is our resistance to the extreme truth about Him that creates within us liabilities that when exposed to the intensity of the passion of God's pure agape love presence, our resistance itself will overheat from exposure to God's passion and will become the cause of our own self-destruction.

This is what the focus of true overcoming is all about. It is not so much bad behaviors that we need to overcome. In fact, wrong behaviors and breaking of rules are symptoms of a much deeper problem, and that core problem is distrust and believing lies about God that increases our resistance to the truth about God. What we are battling against are not outside forces of sin from other people. No, the battle we wage is mostly taking place between our ears in the various avenues of our thinking and feelings. This is where the real war is taking place and where we need to be the most aware of our need for divine influence.

We live in this world, but we don't fight our battles in the same way the world does. (ERV) The weapons we use in our fight are not the world's weapons but God's powerful weapons, which we use to destroy strongholds. We destroy false arguments; we pull down every proud obstacle (GNB) and all intellectual arrogance that opposes the knowledge of God. We take every thought captive so that it is obedient to Christ. (GW) (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

It is becoming clear that the faith that overcomes the world works inside our minds and hearts where the center of the real battle is taking place. This is not a faith that we work up in some sort of forced believing mentality or some formula that we figure out how to operate. No, it is a spontaneous kind of belief in who God really is, a faith that is actually a reflection of the faithfulness of God. I have been learning that just as love induces love in others, likewise faith also induces faith. So the more I come to appreciate how much faith God has in me, how much He is willing to trust me to respond to increasing revelations of His love for me, my natural reaction can be to trust His heart more and more.

The battle heats up when my responsive faith suddenly comes up against lies about God that lurk in so many places inside of me that resist the truth I am learning about Him. This is what Paul is talking about here. My growing faith has to be constantly fueled and empowered through revelations from the Spirit of God so that it conquers the strongholds of the enemy's lies inside of my heart. As I embrace the light of God's goodness it exposes and dismantles false beliefs and arguments against God that have kept me hostage to fears about Him. My growing appreciation of the amazing humility of Jesus described in Philippians 2:5-8 (who is the perfect reflection of His Father) directly attacks and pulls down every proud attitude and belief that blinds and hardens my heart. And most of all, I experience the life of overcoming as I come to really know God intimately and allow His love for me to ravish my heart, transform my perceptions about Him and draw out my affections. This is what results from knowing the God who is love.

There is much more that is jumping out at me from these verses in 1 John, but I need to save that for another time.