Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “The Good News of the Judgement”. So often the so-called “good news of the judgement” is presented in some legal fashion that has the Father willfully blind to you and me because Jesus “covers” us with His righteousness. No wonder this “gospel” has little power to save us (heal us). This “gospel” is some legal finagling by God so that you and I can stand “justified”, so-called. This “gospel” has no practical good news for us in our battle with sin and self. Just some agreement between the Father and the Son. You and I seem to have no part in it at all. We just need to agree to the terms… have faith or trust in the terms.
But if the “good news” is not about you and me being saved… and instead is the truth about God. Now that is another thing. The “good news” about God… that He loves us like the Son; that the Father along with the son wants us as understanding friends (see John15;15). This is the “good news” that will make us want to be with Him. To be with the One who loves us like the Father we always wanted. This revelation will lead us to come home. Which is the point of it all. To come to the Father so we can be healed. The other so-called “gospel” has the son dying to appease the Father and enable the Father to forgive us so we can come home to our very legalistic father. This “gospel” paints the Father in a false light. And makes us leery of coming home to a “father” who cannot love us until His Son “pays the penalty” for our sin. No wonder our worship under such a false picture of our “father” is so lukewarm.
So, what to do with this lukewarm faith of ours? “I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see” (Revelation 3:18). We are told to “buy” or exchange our meager concept of a vindictive god for the truth about our God who loves us. This is the gold. “The gold tried in the fire is faith that works by love. Only this can bring us into harmony with God. We may be active, we may do much work; but without love, such love as dwelt in the heart of Christ, we can never be numbered with the family of heaven” (Christ’s Object Lessons pg. 158). Seeing the Father as Christ, loving us as Christ, sets us right (the true meaning of “justified”) and motivates us to come home to our Father who loves us. This is so much more than being legally acquitted by our stern judgmental father so we can come home.
“With untold love our God has loved us, and our love awakens toward Him as we comprehend something of the length and breadth and depth and height of this love that passeth knowledge. By the revelation of the attractive loveliness of Christ, by the knowledge of His love expressed to us while we were yet sinners, the stubborn heart is melted and subdued, and the sinner is transformed and becomes a child of heaven. God does not employ compulsory measures; love is the agent which He uses to expel sin from the heart. By it He changes pride into humility, and enmity and unbelief into love and faith” (Mount of Blessing pg. 76).
What of the white garments? Are they just Christ’s righteousness that covers-up dirty, sinful me? Am I just a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Am I just a whitewashed tomb full of dead bones? “When we submit ourselves to Christ, the heart is united with His heart, the will is merged in His will, the mind becomes one with His mind, the thoughts are brought into captivity to Him; we live His life. This is what it means to be clothed with the garment of His righteousness” (Christ’s Object Lessons pg. 311). Oh. It is character. Our character. Our character which is formed as we follow our Lord… as we come home to the Father who loves us.
The eye salve is the discernment gained by having our loving Father as our Father… as the love of our life. “If we keep the glory of God ever in view, our eyes will be anointed with the heavenly eye-salve, and we shall be able to see deeper, and to behold afar off what the world is. As we discern its dishonesty, its craftiness, its selfishness, its eye-service, its pretense and boasting and grasping covetousness, we are to take our stand to represent the cause of truth by a revelation of sound principles, a firm integrity, and a holy boldness in acknowledging Christ” (Review and Herald 10/7/1909). Once again, integrity and character, a by-product of loving and following our God, is the remedy.
The so-called gospel of “Payment of penalty” is not enough to move us from loving ourselves… to loving our Father. That “gospel” hardly gets us out of ourselves and into church once/week. We must see our Father aright, else we will never love Him. We will never really “come home”. The true gospel, is the good news about our Father. That He is just like the Son, loves us just like the Son. And forgives us even before the “Cross”.
“But this great sacrifice (on the cross) was not made in order to create in the Father's heart a love for man, not to make Him willing to save. No, no! ‘God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.’ John 3:16. The Father loves us, not because of the great propitiation, but He provided the propitiation because He loves us. Christ was the medium through which He could pour out His infinite love upon a fallen world. ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.’ 2 Corinthians 5:19. God suffered with His Son. In the agony of Gethsemane, the death of Calvary, the heart of Infinite Love paid the price of our redemption” (Steps to Christ pg. 13).
With Brotherly love, Jim