The Gospel in Twenty Questions (21 page)

Return with me to
the esplanade. Do you see my girls standing obediently, still and safe? Here is
the $64,000 question: What holds them still when they want to run on? There is
only one thing
—
my love for them.

Because
my girls know how much I love them, they trust me to make decisions for them. I
can see things they can’t see, like oncoming vans. It’s the same with your
heavenly Father. He loves you so much that you can trust him with your life.

But
what if one of my girls is having a bad day? Perhaps she got out of bed on the
wrong side. Perhaps she is hungry and irritable. What if she is no longer
remaining in my love? She might start thinking,
Why do I have to stop? I
don’t need anyone to tell me what to do. I’m not stopping. I’m going to run on
to the playground.

So
she runs out in front of the van. This is not good! Her disobedience could get
her killed. But I would not be the one killing her.

Again,
this is obvious, right? So why do we think God punishes us when we disobey him?
The heavy van of life knocks us down, and as we lay bleeding we tell ourselves,
“God is chastising me.” Only he’s not. He didn’t give you cancer, make you
redundant, or cause your spouse to run off with the kids. God is almighty, but
that doesn’t make him responsible for everything that happens to you.

You
need to understand that your Father loves you when you’re obedient and he loves
you when you’re disobedient. His love never changes. But we change. We may
wander from the sunshine of his love to the shade of self-trust. When that
happens, we put ourselves in danger. We make stupid decisions, listen to lies,
and reap the whirlwind.

If
my daughter disobeys me she might get flattened by the van, but I won’t kick
her out of the family. Neither will God kick you out of his family when you
disobey. His eternal love is greater than your momentary lapses of judgment.

“Paul,
are you saying that my obedience doesn’t matter?”

Of
course it matters. Obeying God will keep you from getting splattered by the
proverbial truck. Jesus councils us to remain in his love because that’s our
home. His love is your strong tower and refuge.

We
don’t obey to earn his love (we already have it) or his forgiveness (in Christ,
it’s already ours). We obey our heavenly Father for the same reason my girls
obeyed me the other evening: Because we know he is good and he loves us and
wants the best for us.

Adam disobeyed God and suffered the
consequences. Jesus has given us a second chance
—
don’t screw it up
this time. God demands total obedience. The devil will do what he can to make
you disobey because he knows that “God’s wrath comes on those who are
disobedient.” So do what you’re told and obey.

Right there is your
standard sermon on obedience. Have you heard it before? Okay, maybe my version
is a little heavy-handed and over the top. Maybe the version you heard was more
tactful and came with mood music and an altar call. But if the punchline was,
“You must obey God
or else
,” then what you heard was pure law.

I
hope you understand that by “law,” I don’t necessarily mean the Ten
Commandments. Law is anything
you must do
to make God love you or bless
you or accept you. “We must embrace a lifestyle of obedience if we are to
please the Lord.” That’s law. “If you would follow Jesus you must obey his
word.” This too is law.

Any
law-based message will leave you wondering, “How does the love of God figure
into this?” The law-preacher has a ready answer. “Jesus said if you love me you
will obey me. To love God means to obey his commands. God is to be feared and
obeyed.” That sounds scary. That sounds like the love of God hinges on my
perfect obedience and, to be honest, I am not perfectly obedient. If I disobey,
does that mean God won’t accept me? Does that mean I’m not truly saved?

Bingo.

Now
the law-preacher has you right where he wants you
—
sitting on the edge
of your seat, anxious and ready to swallow whatever list of dead works he has
for you today. Using fiery rhetoric and chopped-up scriptures, he will whip you
into a frenzy of promise making. “Lord, I’ll do everything the Bible says.”

Do
you know what happens next? Well, if your flesh is strong, you’ll be singled
out as a walking-talking Christian success story, and your ego will get a hefty
injection of religious pride. But if your flesh is weak, you’ll be marginalized
as a failure and shackled with guilt and condemnation. Either way you lose.

“Paul,
are you against obedience?” I am not. I am against flesh-powered Christianity.
I am against anything that smells of self-trust.

To
get to the heart of this obedience issue we need to go back to the beginning,
to the Garden of Eden. To get the right answer, we need to ask the right
question, which is this: Why did Adam fall? For many years, my answer to that
question was: “Adam disobeyed God.” That seems simple enough, doesn’t it? God
told Adam not to eat; Adam ate. End of story.

Only
it’s not the end of the story. It’s not even the right story. Adam’s
disobedience was not the problem but a symptom of a deeper problem, which is
that he did not trust God. In eating the forbidden fruit, Adam declared God to
be an untrustworthy liar. Through his actions he was saying, “God, I know
better than you. I can decide these matters for myself. I’m better off without
you.” And so Adam, full of godless wisdom, stepped off the sidewalk right in
front of the van called death. Big mistake.

Like
us, Adam lived in a world of uncertainty. Like us, he had questions he couldn’t
answer
—
questions like these: “Why did God forbid me to eat from
this particular tree?” and “What is this ‘death’ he said would come if I did?”

Adam
was in the dark,
and that was the whole point. God
purposely designed things that way because he wanted Adam and Eve to trust him.
By introducing uncertainty into their world, he was inviting them to a
relationship of dependence on him. If they had trusted him they would have
lived and enjoyed abundant life. But they chose to go their own way
and
so reaped the awful consequences of their choice.

Life
is a setup, an invitation to respond to the overtures of a Creator who loves us
and desires to share his life with us. As for Adam, so for us. Think about it.
There is far more to life than you can comprehend or manage. You simply don’t
know how things are going to turn out. You don’t know whether your decisions
today will prove to be good tomorrow. Have you chosen the right course? Will
you still have your job in a year? What will happen if the economy tanks or
your health deteriorates? You don’t know.

Try
as we might we simply weren’t made to cope with all that life throws at us. We
are designed for dependence. We are hardwired to trust in a faithful Father who
loves us.

Life
is big and we are small. But the good news declares that God is biggest of all
and he cares for us right down to our smallest needs.

Obedience follows
trust as surely as disobedience follows distrust. But what does distrust look
like? Distrust has two aspects: (1) Distrust is Adam disregarding God and
saying, “I know better” and (2) distrust is the Israelites at Sinai saying,
“God, tell us what to do and we’ll do it” (see Exodus 19:8).

Don’t
be fooled by the Israelites’ desire to obey God. Their motives were rotten, and
their hearts were faithless. If they trusted God they would not have asked for
rules. They would’ve said, “God, remember your covenant with our father Abraham
and bless us.” Instead they basically said, “God, we don’t believe your
promises to Abraham. Tell us how we can bless ourselves.” And God gave them
what they asked for
:
rules for self-blessification.

Today
there are many who are searching for keys and principles and guidelines and
strategies
—
anything but God himself. They go to church or read their
Bibles with an Israelite attitude: “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

By
idolizing the rules in the Bible or the red letters of Jesus they reveal a
faith that is in themselves rather than their Father. This self-trust is
evident in a mindset that says, “I will be safe
if I keep the rules
, God
will bless me
if I keep the rules
, and God will be pleased with me
if
I keep the rules
.”

It’s
as if Jesus never came. It’s as if we were still under the old law-keeping
covenant. Those who live like this are as faithless as the Israelites. They are
rejecting God just as Adam did. Don’t you see? Life isn’t about rules; it’s
about relationship.

Imagine it’s your
wedding day. You’ve had the ceremony, and you’re starting to relax when the
minister hands you a gift, a thick book of
Marriage Rules
. “Read this,”
he says. “The secret to a happy marriage is found within.” You open the book
with interest. Inside you discover many rules and guidelines: “Be honest, be
kind, always tell the truth, listen well, keep your promises, say ‘please’ and
‘thank you,’ freely forgive, don’t covet your neighbor’s wife,” and that sort
of thing. Initially you think,
This is gold! I want a successful marriage,
so I will do everything this book says.

You
keep reading and find there are more rules for marriage than you could possibly
have imagined. There are rules for special days and different seasons, rules on
what to eat and what to wear, rules on property rights, rules regarding
intimacy, rules on family planning, and hundreds more.
Phew! I never knew
marriage was such hard work. But I want a blessed marriage, so I’ll follow the
rules.
I’ll even take this book on our honeymoon.

But
then you turn to the last page and find a surprising message written in large
letters:

If you love your spouse, disregard this
book. You don’t need it. If you love your spouse, you will keep all the rules
effortlessly.

This should be good
news.
What relief!
I can leave the book at home and enjoy my spouse.
Yet there are some who won’t do it. They’ll keep the book just in case. But
there is no
just in case
. There is no conceivable situation where the
rules could replace true love. Do you see? If you love your spouse, you don’t
need the book, and if you don’t love your spouse, all the rules in the world
aren’t going to help.

Some
treat the Bible as though it were a book of rules for how to be married to
Jesus. They think they will have a happy marriage if they do everything the
Bible says, or at least everything Jesus says. But love doesn’t work that way.
If you love Jesus, you don’t need the rules, and if you don’t love Jesus, the
rules aren’t going to help. Love comes from the heart, not a book.

And
yet, God help us, we crave rules and instructions.
God, there must be
something I can do.
So God in his mercy and patience gives us the mother of
all commands:

My command is this: Love each other as I
have loved you. (John 15:12)

You want a command
to keep?
That’s
your command. Do you have a need to do something for
Jesus? Then do what he says here: “Love each other.” But wait a second. Read
the rest of the command: “Love each other
as I have loved you
.”

Right
there is grace. Jesus is not giving us law that must be obeyed. Nor is he
holding a big stick over our heads and saying, “Love each other to prove you
love me.” He’s saying our love for others can only ever be a response to his
love for us. He leads, we follow. He gives, we receive, and only then can we
give what we have received.

Do
you see the wisdom of Jesus here? If you’re the sort of person who craves
rules, you will find this one impossible to keep. If you have not experienced
his unconditional love, you will struggle to love others. It will be sheer
drudgery and you will fail again and again. Read Jesus’ words as law, and your
need for grace will soon be obvious. “God help me. I can’t do it.”

Bingo.

Now
the Giver of grace has you right where he wants you
—
at
the end of yourself and ready to drink from the fountain of his love. You begin
to focus on the second part of his command:
as I have loved you.
You
remember the cross and the empty tomb and think of all Jesus has done for you.
He has loved you, forgiven you, and wooed you to himself. All this he did
before you had done a blessed thing.

Suddenly
the penny drops. Grace leaps out of his words and falls on you in a bearlike
hug. In an instant, everything changes and you become a different person. A
hugged person. A dearly beloved child of God.

As
you receive the love of you Father you find you cannot hold it all in. You have
to share it with others or you’ll burst.

 “Christ’s
love compels us,” said Paul (2 Corinthians 5:14). It energizes and motivates
us. When you have been seized by the power of a great affection it empowers you
to love extravagantly. You find that keeping the command of Jesus is easier
than breaking it. This is not because grace helps us keep the rules
—
we
may not even know what the rules are
—
but because Christ lives in us and what
Christ says, he does.