The Non-existent Category

The modern idea of morality is that if an activity doesn’t hurt another and it is shared by mutual consent then it’s okay.  But there is no such thing. All immorality is a form of violence.  It is killing another person’s capacity for giving and receiving genuine love.  

But with God there is resurrection.

Early Spring

Love Your Wife

Recently I was thinking about what it means to “love your wife as Christ loved the church.”  This is the key to a good marriage, right?  But think about this:

If you love your wife with single-hearted devotion and consistent sacrificial service, then can you be sure--

That you’ll ensure the results you want when you want them? 

That you’ll guarantee the relationship of your dreams? 

If you treat her like a queen, will she treat you like a king?  Maybe, but not necessarily. Ask Hosea the prophet. (See the book of Hosea.) If you’re still not convinced, then ask Jesus.  He is the one and only perfect bridegroom, with a flawless record and ongoing perfect performance.  He has sought and is continually seeking the highest joy of His bride, but He is still often belittled, ignored, or refused.  Have you ever slighted or ignored the Lover of your soul?  If you have responded this way to perfect love, then you should never feel entitled to a correct response to your love.  We need to be wary of basing our love on the desired response to it.

Sometimes I’m afraid we subconsciously mix our American pragmatism in with the call of the gospel-pattern.  Even with teaching on the desired benefits of living according to the pattern Christ sets for husbands in marriage, we are in danger of subtly clinging to the natural desire of our heart to stay in control.  (The same holds true on Bible-teaching about parenting.)  The danger exists in any teaching on relationships that implies, “As long as you do A, you will ensure B.”  God will always satisfy the soul that seeks Him but He is the only one with whom right relationship has a sure result--and the necessity of right relationship with Him is losing control, by releasing it to Him.  In human relationships, there is no formula for obtaining the outcome we want when we want it—no matter how pure our desire, or healthy our means.  The path of love is not a guaranteed success formula.

The point of this post is not to discourage husbands or put down wives.  Nor is it a not-so-subtle complaint against my own wonderful wife!*  In fact, husbands likely have greater cumulative blame for poor marriages than wives do.  My point is that, for us to “love our wives like Christ loved the church,” we need to understand what that means.  One thing it does not mean is, “act in the way that will ensure the results you want when you want them.”  Jesus, the perfect Discipler, had deficient disciples.  Jesus, the perfect Lover, has an unreliable bride.  Removing the expectation of guaranteed results on our timetable necessitates having a motive for love that will last without it.  If the motive is not guaranteed results, then what is it?

The only way to love your spouse consistently and enduringly is by it being the overflow of Christ’s own sacrificial and satisfying love for you.  Your love must be the pursuit of her joy and transformation through that same satisfaction.  The consistency of your love will not depend on her responsiveness, but on His constancy.

Yes, this is the way that desirable effects will most likely take place, that your wife will be happy and become all that God made her to be.  It is the path for discovering the best possible marriage.  Christ’s bride will be radiant.  But remember the journey of Hosea, and remember that of Jesus.  To truly love another “as Christ loved” you means depending ultimately on His beauty, on His love for you. It means relishing the promise of the outcome that He has ensured through His sacrifice.  It means leaning on Him in your pursuit of her good.  And like Hosea, it means discovering the staggering mercy and sufficiency of the ultimate Bridegroom.  This beauty makes it all worth it.

“I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from them… O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols?  It is I who answer and look after you.  I am like a luxuriant cypress; from Me comes your fruit.” Hosea 14:4,8

*[This post is officially approved by my wife. :)]

Deeper

New love is fun, but it cannot compare with well-aged love, carefully forged through time and trials.

The longer a relationship lasts, the deeper its potential for greatness.

Story and Song

 "I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller." -G.K. Chesterton

But if God is the Author, then why such a story--full of sorrow and suffering, disappointment and pain?  Those familiar with the Bible know that the characters in the story have rebelled against the Author, and unleashed an unrelenting torrent of sorrow through their sin.  But the Author has not given up His place. Moreover, the unusual thing about this story is that the Author is also the main Character.   And this is where things really get strange.  The climax of HisStory is when He humbly steps onto the stage, becoming a man, and enters the unfamiliar confines of time and space.  He struggled, suffered and grieved like every other character in the story, yet without sin.  But then, in the end, He did far more--He drank a cup of infinite pain.  On the cross, Christ was torn from the Father, rejected, forsaken, and cursed.  To the only begotten Son, this was infinite pain--the cost of redemption.  But this was part of the very plot that He co-authored. 

Author N.D. Wilson has a good insight--why does any author include difficulties and obstacles in a story?  So that the hero can overcome them.  So why would the Author of the Story create a world in which He would suffer infinite pain?

So that we could know Him as the ultimate Hero.  So that you could know Him as your ultimate Hero.

You cannot perceive life accurately unless you are hearing this Story, the Song of God--the song of the Gospel, the cosmic love song.

Your life is part of an epic story in which your hardships and the way you respond to them play a critical role.  Will you cling to the Hero and reflect His glory, or get lost in your own little world?

To have a good grip on reality we need a healthy dose of fiction.  We need good stories to remind us that we are in one.  If we trust the Author and play our part, we can enjoy it--the true story, the best one, in which the Author is the main character and ultimate Hero, who will one day right all wrongs, redeem all sorrows, and make all things new.

My love and I

Pleasing God?

Originally I wrote this illustration for a specific friend after a conversation about what the proper motivation for pleasing God is if He already is pleased with us in Christ.  What does it mean to please someone who already delights in you? Since then it has seemed the illustration could be helpful to a wider audience as well.

“Look at me fly, Daddy!” says my three-year-old daughter Jane, as she flits here and there around the room, inspired by Peter Pan.  Why is she seeking my attention?  What is the heart behind, “Look at me, Daddy!”?  I feel assured that her frame of mind is not, “now at last I can garner my Father’s approval.”  It is only with the certainty of my approval that she has the confidence to request my attention.  The urgent plea for me to observe her is only her attempt to trigger a fresh expression of my delight.  So it is meant to be with our desire to please our Father.  To earn or deserve His favor?  Of course not.  To freshly affect the heart of Him who has adopted us at infinite cost and set His eternal affection on us?  Definitely.  We have the power to please or pain our Father.  We cannot remove His cross-rooted favor in us as His children.  But through obedience we can freely receive and know fresh and ever-deepening levels of His delight.  Even if we grieve Him through unbelief, we cannot lose His favor as His beloved children.  But when we meet His loving gaze through believing, we bring fresh delight to His heart.  Obedience that flows from faith is our, “Look at me, Daddy!”  “Therefore we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him” (2 Cor. 5:9).

Paradoxical Pleasure

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

Matthew 10:39

“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…” Philippians 3:7-8

From the moment of conversion to Christ until the final day, followers of Jesus live a life that is typified by paradox: the weak are strong, the poor are rich, those most in debt to God have the most to give away.  Conversion is the moment where you see you’ve been wrong all your life, and you couldn’t be more happy about it.  From that point on we experience our greatest joy through embracing our weakness and need as the continual context for experiencing Christ’s fullness.  Looking away from our self we discover our highest fulfillment in Him.

From the time I first began to recognize God as the Exceeding Joy (Psalm 43) I have discovered ever more deeply the paradoxical nature of pursuing our highest happiness.  It is something we can never earn or deserve.  It is a gift.  We cannot achieve it but it is so great we must let go of everything to fully take hold of it.  It is free to us because it cost someone else infinitely.  Jesus paid the price and Jesus is the happiness.

God’s love is His relentless pursuit of our highest happiness by whatever means necessary.  Our highest happiness is knowing Him—He is His own greatest gift. (John 17:3) The necessary means has already cost Him everything.  And now, “He who did not spare His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all, will He not with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32) Yes, everything we need for our deepest enjoyment of Him, the all-surpassing Joy.  Jesus is worth more than anything.  He is before all things and above all things.  When you see that Christ is worth more than anything, but that He gave up everything so that you could have Him, and that He could have you…then your heart is freed to let go of inferior things to take hold of Him—to esteem Him and relationship with Him above all else.  “…May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world was crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14) A fresh view of this reality through the Spirit is the daily battle of the Christian life.

God’s love evokes a striving to receive all that is freely given in Christ.  The heart of the Christian life is not sacrificial service, but unmerited receiving. With this foundation, selfless service inevitably flows, but even it becomes a means of receiving (i.e. “My food is to do the will of the Father, and accomplish His work.” John 4:34).  True Life is a soul astir with the wonder of God’s love in Christ.  A life compelled by grace.  A life constrained by the wonder of enjoying Christ and making Him known.  A heart that has tasted ultimate satisfaction and is hungry for so much more.  It is a life of paradoxical pleasure. Compared to that, all else is, to paraphrase the great apostle, a hill of beans.

“Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called…”
(1 Timothy 6:12)

Expressing your love helps deepen it.  Sharing the joy of what you’ve found increases your own, and that is why this blog exists.