Monthly Archives: July 2014

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Hate the Sin and the Sinner

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Originally posted June 2013.

God is opposed to those who are opposed to Him. It is bad theology to say that God hates the sin but loves the sinner.

Does God hate anyone? The answer is yes.

  • Psalm 5:5, “The boastful shall not stand before Thine eyes; Thou dost hate all who do iniquity,”
  • Psalm 11:5, “The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates.”
  • Lev. 20:23, “Moreover, you shall not follow the customs of the nation which I shall drive out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I have abhorred them.”
  • Prov. 6:16-19, “There are six things which the Lord hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: 17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, 18 A heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, 19 A false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers.”
  • Hosea 9:15, “All their evil is at Gilgal; indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more; All their princes are rebels.”

As God honors His covenants, we must understand where those who are not part of His covenant stand—opposed to Him. Those removed from Him stand condemned by Him and in the fullness of the wrath reserved for all workers of iniquity. His love is for those whom He would not willingly see perish, but who should come to repentance (Matthew 9:13, 2 Peter 3:9). Many have termed this as God’s “general love.” General love, or general grace can be understood as God’s abiding patience for those would turn to what He predestined in Christ. For the saint to remain in God’s favor, he must remain part of the covenant. 1 John 1:9 calls every Christian to confess his sins in order that God’s faithfulness be proven in forgiveness and cleansing of unrighteousness. “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him,” (John 3:36). Hebrews 10:26 says, “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.”

Strategy

Thoughts on Zacchaeus

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When Jesus Calls You By Name (Luke 19:1-10)

I really enjoy Christian service camp. It’s been a part of my life for over 25 years. I grew up in PA and attended Elkhorn Valley Christian Service Camp which was started in 1958. After attending, I wanted to help so I volunteered to spend the summers doing whatever it took to maintain the campgrounds. We were nicknamed the “Pollocks.” I was led to the decision to attend Cincinnati Christian University after the military. Returning years later to the area in which I grew up, I signed on as education and recreation director of Elkhorn Valley Camp and for years I was allowed to give back to the camp which had given so much to me. Camp was a life-changing experience. Make the most of it. Whether it’s camp, or church group, there is value in being together.

I get to experience the Lord

I get to serve the Lord

I get to grow in the Lord

I get to share in the people of the Lord

Zacchaeaus is widely known by the song that some of us learned when we were younger—a song about his experience with Jesus.

“Zacchaeus was a wee little man . . .” His name means “Pure, noble, bright or clean ”

Contrast Luke 18 and the Rich Reluctant Young Ruler with Luke 19 and Rich Ready and Repentant Publican. Luke 19:1 makes the point the Zacchaeus was “very rich.” The town of Jericho represented great wealth, so he was no small man of means.

Those who criticized Jesus only knew Zacchaeus the rich chief publican, the wickedest of the wicked. If you asked the crowd who Zacchaeus was, you may find his reputation would be one not worthy of salvation and too far gone to be shown grace.

What curiosity does? Curiosity seeks to find. It enables you to climb to great heights to get the vantage point you need. It’s first a fascination then an attraction and then an action. There are many things that move us in our life’s decisions. Most influences are first rehearsed in our minds by way of fascination which then progress toward attraction and then action/reaction. Some influences are a result of desperation. Sometimes we, like Zacchaeaus, are moved by the mob’s direction. I’m sure just as everyone who took to the streets that day to see Jesus, he was curious enough to be attracted to the spectacle.

A friend of mine from Haiti named Brennus Etienne shared a story with me of his experience one time with a mob in Porte au Prince.  He was in a store and noticed that everyone in the street was getting stirred up and starting to yell. Before long everyone had started bustling about in the street and the numbers and the volume level began to swell and then all of the sudden the crowd just started to run. What do you do? Of course, Brennus was curious as to what the commotion was all about so he randomly grabbed one of the running persons and asked them, “What’s going on?” The person said, “I don’t know, we’re just all running.”

The mob can move us. The mob can push us. The mob can convince us that being part of their crowd is the most rational and reasonable way to go. A mob can come to the wrong conclusion as to who a person really is. Look at Jesus. He was accused wrongly. But, the experience of the tree that separated Zacchaeus from the mob turned into the experience of a Savior. Our identity with Christ will place us into a group comprising what Hebrews 12 describes as a great cloud of witnesses—those of the faith whose conviction led them to overcome the world.

Wouldn’t you like to have an identity that can’t be trampled on by the world—an incorruptible name that identifies you with eternal significance? You can literally have the name, “Clean, Pure, Spotless, Bright, Noble.”  Knowing Christ is to know him as a person who is first of all seeking you—so find a tree. Knowing Jesus also means he is inviting you to come and follow and he will surely want to come to live with you. And you can walk away with a new name (Isaiah 62:2; Revelation 2:17, 3:12, 19:12).

Jericho to the cross.

Calvary is the tree that separates us from the world and introduces us to a Savior. Redemption means that someone paid for your escape. The wages of sin is death (Romans 3:23). Can a dead person offer anything to God to pay for his own escape? No. Like a tow away zone with the sign “Redeem your car at Joe’s Impound Yard. Fine is $1,000,000/ second.” What? The car’s not worth that much. But you are. You are worth everything to Christ. In the light of this grace, we, like Zacchaeus, would easily respond in repentance to the point he have half of all he owned and promised to return fourfold anything taken dishonestly.

If you are a Christian, think about this. All of us have people we know who need a glimpse of the Savior. We’ve probably had lessons on being a mirror to reflect the light of Christ. Today, think about being a TREE. Kind of like the famous book, “The Giving Tree,” by Shel Silverstein. After giving of itself entirely and the tree was spent except for a stump, it gave the character “Boy” a place to prop himself, and “the tree was happy.”

People may step on you to get closer to Jesus. They may tear off a limb to get a clearer vantage. Remember the sacrifice of others who came before us. Jesus laid down his life to bring us to the Father. Is it too much to sacrifice our Time, Resources, Effort and Energy (TREE)? And, are we Totally Resolved in Engaging the Enemy (TREE)?

“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

 

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

 

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

 

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Mission

Theodicy

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In a majority of biblical accounts, God’s people were more concerned about the justice upon the wicked then they were about their own personal struggles and afflictions. Job sought out a Redeemer who would be and Advocate on his behalf only to say, “NO! He did everything right. He even interceded on behalf of his children through prayer and sacrifice.”

Looking at the context of Amos 5:24, the message to those who have defiled the name of the Lord, His Temple, and His offerings is the burden of Amos and the call for justice. “Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a stream.” A deluge of cleansing was needed to disinfect God’s people.

Habakkakuk likewise called out to God (1:1-4), “How long shall I cry out and you, oh Lord, will not hear?” There was injustice.  In place of the Lord God, Israel had graven images of foreign gods. It was typically their practice to blame their gods when things went wrong. Child sacrifice and mutilation was the answer when the harvest was not plentiful or when drought had stricken the land.

When people blame God for suffering, they have reduced God to nothing more than an image graven from a heart of stone. Educating the world on how a child of God should act in the midst of suffering will go a long way to show the world a living God.

 Theodicy– “defense of God.”  God’s justice demands an answer to lawlessness.  Sin must be answered with its consequences for God to be holy. God’s Word reveals the “full disclosure” of His holiness. His Word does not hide His faithfulness and His justice We should have certain expectations of a Holy, Righteous, and Just God as we should have expectations in anything else (see Romans 3). The Book of Romans tells us we have God’s law instinctively written on our hearts. God is the God of law. All creation falls under the law of God. God is fair by sticking to His rules, even though it means that it applies to us, we should expect nothing less than consistency. One person will not be saved by good works and another by Christ. Does not our realization of disobedience and the consciousness of sin demand a greater response to the grace and mercy of God? If by our good works we were saved and suffered the consequence of sin in the immediate sense, we would have no need for a Savior? Romans 3:26 sees God as both Just and Justifier. Without the understanding of God’s Law, we would be lost in our sin and not aware of it. All have sinned (Romans 3:23) and the wages of our work of sin is death (6:23). The only way to the Father is through the Son.

Job is not so much a story of injustice suffered wrongly but is a story of victory and justice for right-doing to extend outside the limits of a single person to expand broadly to a periphery of witnesses. John 9:1-3 is the scripture where Jesus was questioned with the sins of a blind man’s parents. The victory and purpose for many who would see Jesus as the “light of the world” was at the expense of one person’s temporary affliction. Scripture also speaks of mortality being swallowed up in death and creation being prone to decay and corruption (Romans 8:22, 21) in HOPE. We must define again what evil is and what sin is. Evil can be defined as that which works contrary to God. It is not evil when suffering works toward his providence, right?  Many things today come from bad interpretation. Looking at Hitler, and more recently in the Middle East, we can call these men—evil men. The two young men recently who decapitated their mother and severed her hands are evil. Psalm 11:5 says that God hates the one who loves violence. There’s no such sentiment in the Bible that leads us to believe that God only hates the sin and not the sinner.  What justifies the condition that brought about their propensity toward evil?  In these cases, it’s sin. The effects of evil and the environment of suffering for the preservation of the saints of God is providence. Remember the houses built on the sand and the rock? For the non-Christian, every day is a chance for repentance, no matter how we look at it and His will toward their salvation. Anything suffered by an unsaved person is an expression of God’s holiness, not an expression of his love, or lack of love. To sin is to rebel against God’s law and therefore against His own holiness. Sin separates us from righteousness and affects us with death.

To live outside of a relation with God IS to live contrary to our created purpose.  Genesis: and things were created after “its kind.” We are created God-kind FOR a relationship with Him. That is why we can become brothers and sister with Christ when we are transformed and born again as a new creature through the breath of God’s Spirit and implant of the seed of His Word. To attempt to relate with creation or anything that isn’t God is to deny our purpose. To look at God as unreasonable for allowing suffering is accepting a relationship with creation and death, not our Creator and life.