Mysterious Ways

"...His visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men; so shall He startle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at Him, for that which had not been told them shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider." Isaiah 52:14, 15

The Atonement was something you could not have guessed. It is true that both Jew and Gentile knew that the divine required sacra fices (though perhaps for different reasons); it is equally true that the Gentiles went so far as to say that a god could be a sacrifice. However, that the God of gods would come emptied of His authority and glory, His coming void of all candor or ceremony or splendor, coming disguised as an ordinary man, easily confused with and replaced by any other man, coming to be rejected and murdered by His own creations and worshippers in a sacrifice that was equally void of all candor or ceremony or splendor; that is something no priest or myth maker could have conjured. The Atonement is less like a myth and more like real life because it caught everyone by surprise. We who have heard the story over and over again are no longer surprised; but to those who experienced first hand, it was the shock of the century.

There is a reason that God's ways and workings are often described as "mysteries," i.e., truths that are hidden for the moment (not, as some would say, the unknowable). God's ways are "mysterious" in that they are not only hidden but also true, i.e., real and actual. We linger on their 'hiddenness,' but forget that they are true ways, true workings, ways and workings that exist in absolute Reality and that will work themselves out into relative reality at appointed times. That is why what God does catch us so off guard: they are not only hidden, but also real, like real life, like reality; and reality is something you could not have guessed.

"We who watch Your Story unfold,

Are gloriously surprised at every turn..."

-Jon Vowell

In Touch With Reality

"O Lucifer, son of the morning...[thou] that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that would not release his prisoners." Isaiah 14:17
"That thou [i.e., the Messiah] may say to the prisoners, 'Go forth,' to them that are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.' They shall feed along the roads, and their pastures shall be in all desolate heights." Isaiah 49:9
"For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." I John 3:8b

Do you believe that God is in the business of unraveling all of Satan's evil? Do you believe that God seeks and will have the eradication of suffering and death? Do you believe that redemption means the world becoming like a star, and all the traces and effects of Sin will burn away? Do you believe that redemption is as much now as it is the future? Do you look for redemption in your present day circumstances? Do you believe that the Cross has set all things upon the objective reality of redemption, or is darkness your only view? It is the strength of the Christian to be able to realize and claim the truth that darkness is real, but it is not the end. At the bottom of all things, the reality of evil has been undercut, and it will fade away; even today it is happening, if you will only look for it. Are our eyes filtering all through redemption, or is everything merely material, nonsensical?
You remember past evils; do you remember the good that God worked out of them? You acknowledge the power of man's fallenness; do you acknowledge the almighty power of God's grace? You have seen the ravagings of Sin; do you see the reality of Redemption? If we focus solely of Sin, we will despair. If we focus solely of Redemption, we will daydream. If, however, we focus of the reality of Redemption working within a world of Sin, then we shall live like the children of God. We are ever aware of a great upheaval that has taken place within the very framework of the universe, an upheaval whose effects flash here and there now and again, which will one day be fully unleashed in purging fury (Romans 8:18-23).
The good news that we have is this: God has struck Sin at its very core, and all evil will die with it; if ye be evil, then repent! Perhaps you preach this news; do you believe it? Do you believe that Redemption is the reality that is consuming Sin off the face of the earth, or do we sequester Redemption to merely salvation experiences: ecstatic moments in time, and nothing more? For every moment that Redemption is not our reality, we will become fearful, bitter, angry, and cynical. The children of God are never to be these things; we are the never naive nor despairing flames in the night who believe in and point to the reality of the Sun. We are the children of the Burning Heart. Do you see the Fire that purges away all evil; or do you know only the night, and forget the light given to you? If the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

"Holy light of the world,
Save us from ourselves:
We are out of touch.
Take us out of our shadows
And up to Your Reality..."
-Jon Vowell

The Beauty of God's Soul

"I, even I, and He that blotteth out thy transgressions for my own sake, and will not remember thy sins." Isaiah 43:25

The forgiveness of God is found within His own nature; it is not based upon any merit of ours. God did not send Christ because we deserved it. What we deserved is exactly what we chose in Adam: the not-God, outer darkness, Hell. God sent Christ not because of who we are, but because of who He is. We are fallen, broken, cursed, defiled and diseased. We deserve nothing and can merit nothing except damnation. God is love, holiness, goodness, grace, justice, and mercy. He cannot help but act in a loving, holy, good, gracious, just, and merciful way. Christ is the result of everything God is responding to the reality of Sin, and this response has revealed the beauty of His soul.
Christ is the beauty of God's soul, the revelation of Himself in His entirety. The Incarnation was not only God made flesh, but also a revelation of His nature. God (being who He is) could not and would not simply ignore Sin. His response had to be, and that response was, the Incarnation, a revelation of all that He is. Christ reveals a God that, though men may not believe in Him, at least they will know that there is a God worth believing in.

"Christ the Glory of God,
The Revelation of Deity's Soul.
Though the world is bitter and ugly,
Heaven is Sweetness and Beauty..."
-Jon Vowell

Order and Salvation

"The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate..." Isaiah 24:5, 6

There is an order to the universe. That order is God's will. He communicates that will to us through His laws, ordinances, and covenants. They are boundaries and limitations set on the universe that keep the order that is His will. His order is boundaries, but not a prison, for outside the lines of His will is only Chaos and Night, and to be lost in them is the worst kind of slavery.
God's order is defined by hierarchy: animals submitted to humans, children to parents, servants to masters, wives to husbands, the Church to Christ, all men to God. Each submission differs in kind and not degree, but they are all still the submission of one to another. It is this hierarchical structure that makes up God's will, and it is the only way to keep peace and harmony in the universe.
Now, Sin is the breaking of that structure, the defiance of that order, the turning from God's will to self will. As Lewis put it, "It is the nature of evil to spread. Limitations and boundaries belong to the good." The pain and damage of Sin is caused because Sin breaks out of the structure, it steps out of God's will and into the void where God is not, and where He is not there is only negation and death, i.e., Hell. Sin brings the presence of Hell into a person.
When Adam sinned, the whole of humanity was separated from that structure, and hence from God's will, and hence from God Himself. This separation has altered our fundamental disposition: where once we were alive, now we are dead, and dead men are incapable of any action; therefore, we are unable to return to that order. Also, where once we naturally embraced life (which is the essence of God's will), now we naturally embrace death (see Romans 7:18-23). Therefore, we can no longer keep within that structure even if we somehow could get back to it as dead men. This whole mess is what Christ came to fix: to bring us back to the fellowship of God's will (for it is fellowship with Him), and give us the fundamental disposition (i.e., His own) that will keep us within it.
God's will can never be broken. It is never a question of breaking it, but whether or not you get with it, and Christ makes it possible for fallen man to get with it again. You can stay outside it if you like, but know that there is only outer darkness beyond the will of God, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
God's will is not some box that the universe is crammed into. God designed the universe to only work within the order of His will. It is the way it ought to be, the way it's supposed to work. There is no other way it can work. Outside of His will is not freedom, but slavery: slavery to chaos and insanity, to darkness and death, for there is nothing else out there.
The structure of God's will is the only way anything in the universe finds fulfillment, for it is not the mere keeping of creeds and rules. The will of God is kept because God is within you, and God is only within you when you commune with Him, so therefore the will of God is kept and fullness found only in communion with God: finding your place in the Trinity's great dance, your soul completely in tune with the movements of Love Himself. That is where peace and harmony are found, and they are found no where else. This is what Christ wants to do for you: bring your soul back into communion with God, to place it back in the structure of His will, to put you back in the place where you belong and where you find fulfillment.
It is a truism (I believe) that inconsistency breeds pain: inconsistent eating habits, weather patterns, or the workings of a day or week can all bring varying levels of pain to body and soul. Now, God's will is a structure, hence order, hence consistency (not monotony; God's structure is orderly as He is orderly, but it is also endless various as He is endless various: every sunset varies from another, but they all stay within the laws that they abide by). To step out of God's will is to step outside the consistency that is of God, which means the inconsistency that is opposite of God's will is the worse kind of inconsistency ("corrupto optimi pessima"), and therefore it brings the worse kind of pain, i.e., the pain of the chaotic soul. The Word (the very essence of structure and order) came to bring us back to that consistency, to bring our chaotic souls back to the harmonious order of God's will. That is salvation, that is the peace of our lives. Oh, to be fully swept up into the wonders of His order! How infinite are its pleasures, for His pleasures are infinite! Amen.

Another word on Redemption as Objective Reality

"Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness." Isaiah 1:27

Justice is joined to redemption's hip just as much as love is. Do not be fooled: our culture's over-focus on God's love has made His justice and righteousness our enemy. Speak of God's justice and/or righteousness, and most people get a very dark image: the merciless executioner, chomping at the bit, waiting with glee to be avenged of us, only to have its sadism disappointed by love, which we treat as the lone hero who flings himself into the fray and "satisfies" justice and righteousness, as though those two were hungry beasts ready to devour us and love had to throw them something else, viz., our Lord Jesus. So justice and righteousness are monsters, love a lone ranger, and Jesus a hunk of meat. How dare we assume so.
"Zion shall be redeemed with [justice]..." The true redemption of Zion (beyond the Babylonian captivity) comes through Christ's redemption of all (see esp. Romans 11:25-32). Christ came, not as an opponent against justice, but as the fulfillment of BOTH love and justice (Matthew 5:17; John 3:16; Romans 13:8, 10; see also blog entry "Objective Reality of Redemption" for further exposition). It was not that God's love got justice "out of the way" through Christ, but that through Christ, God's love and justice worked hand in hand to bring redemption to man.
Get out of your head any idea that leads you to believe that some part of God's nature was done away with by Christ's sacrifice. If any part of God was done away with, then God is no longer Perfection (i.e., no longer the Complete Being, or the Source of Completion). Every part of God's nature was "satisfied" in Christ.

The Objective Reality of Redemption

"The Lord is righteous..." (Lamentations 1:18a)

In the six verses prior to verse eighteen, we see a grueling exposition of the suffering of Jerusalem under the Babylonian siege, and all of these verses have sprinkled throughout them the phrase, "The Lord hath (or "has," depending on your translation)..."

"The Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger..." (vs. 12)
"[The Lord] hath...sent fire into my bones,...spread a net for my feet,...turned me back,...made me desolate..." (vs. 13)
"[The Lord] hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into [enemy] hands..." (vs. 14)
"The Lord hath trodden under foot,...He hath called an assembly against me,...[He] hath trodden...the daughter of Judah..." (vs. 15)
"The Lord hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him..." (Vs. 17)

I suppose that when one considers that this "someone" that the Lord hath afflicted is the apple of His eye, any reasonable person would pause and wonder, "WHAT is God DOING?! He is the one destroying His own people? How dare He! Who does He think He is?"
Destroy His own people? Please. What about the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Hittites, and all the other pagan nations that Israel came in contact with? They were plagued, slaughtered, and wiped out in practically genocidal fashion. And here we stand looking back, and wonder, "By what right or reason has God done these things?"
The prophet Jeremiah responds as he laments, "The Lord is righteous: for I have rebelled against His commandments..." After six verses (and in the end, a whole five chapter book) of God sounding like a cruel, vindictive sadist, the prophet sounds a truth known but forgotten, and we are struck by the reality of God's righteousness.
Please allow a slight rant: Political correctness (the aptly called "cancer of the West") and a postmodern produced wishy-washy attitude has turned the people of the West into sentimental saps. "Why must you be so judgmental?" "Can't you see the shades of gray?" "Why can't we just all get along?" BECAUSE: "The Lord is righteous..." Okay, rant over. Let's cut to the quick.
Yes, toleration is good. Yes, God is love (a LOT more on that in a moment). But remember what C.S. Lewis taught in The Four Loves: whenever you take a singular virtue of the Tao (the law, the moral code, "written on our hearts," etc.) and rip it out and make it THE singular virtue to follow, it becomes demonic. God's holiness and righteousness is sacrificed more often by the world on an altar of tolerance, and (more seriously) by Christians on an altar of His love.
In case Sunday School is a distant memory, let's recap: God's is Holy; His holiness keeps Him separated from sin. God is Righteous; His righteousness punishes sin. These are facts lost today in bigger ways then we would like to believe. It is one thing to shout it from pulpits, or in debates, or in the classroom, or from home; and quite another thing to look sheer desolation (of any scale) in the face and hear the answer to your desperate inquiries whispered in your ear: "The Lord is righteous."
Who flooded the world? The Lord hath. Who incinerated Sodom and Gomorrah? The Lord hath. Who sent plagues, slaughter, and genocide to the pagan nations? The Lord hath. Who stores up evil and releases it for judgment? The Lord hath (Daniel 9:14). Who creates evil? The Lord hath (Isaiah 45:7). Who kills and wounds? The Lord hath (Deuteronomy 32:39). And Who, in the last days, will unleash such desolation on the earth, that all heaven will be struck silent? The Lord (Revelation 8:1). Why? Because: "The Lord is righteous."
It is in righteousness that God MUST punish sin. It is from God's right hand, His dexter, that His holy law came (Deuteronomy 33:2), and its purpose was and is to punish and kill sin (Romans 3:19-20; 4:15a; 7:9-12). God's righteousness is an absolute fact, not a mere habit. God IS righteous, i.e., His very being is made up of and exudes righteousness. Before we can continue, be reconciled to this fact: "The Lord is righteous."

"...God is love." (I John 4:8b)

The same language found in Lamentations is found here: God IS love, i.e., His very being is made up of and exudes love. Just as God cannot help but be righteous and bring all it entails, He also cannot help but love and bring all it entails. Now, if righteousness entails judgment (Psalm 9:8; Revelation 19:6), then what does love entail? Love entails SALVATION (Romans 5:8; John 3:16; I John 3:1, 4:10). In righteousness, God cannot help but punish sin; in love, He cannot help but save those that he loves. That God loves us is true (whether or not it is exalted above all His attributes and made a demon).

There is a problem, however, and the problem (as usual) IS US. God loves us, and as lost sinners, He MUST save us. He cannot help but do it. However, God is righteous, and as poor lost sinners, He MUST punish sin, and hence punish us. He cannot help that either. This creates a problem, a problem that deserves to be called something fancy and full of superficial meaning. I think I shall call it "The Dilemma of Being," and here it is in simplest terms:
Righteousness MUST punish sin. God IS righteous. We ARE sinners. Therefore, God MUST punish us.
HOWEVER, love MUST save that which it loves. God IS love. We ARE loved of God. Therefore, God MUST save us.
You see the problem. God's very being demands that he punishes AND saves us AT THE SAME TIME. Gracious, what is God to do?
"Can't He just save us?" If He merely saves us, he would have to overlook our sin, and if He overlooks instead of punishing it, he would no longer be righteous. He would do away with a part of His very being, which is an impossibility: no one can completely do away with a part of their being (i.e., if part of your being is that of masculinity, you can starve it, ignore it, or deny it on the surface, but you cannot do away with it). "Well, why doesn't He just punish us? He has every right to do so!" You are absolutely right on God's rights. However, if He merely punishes us, unleashing His fully justified wrath and consumes us eternally, again He would have done away with a part of His very being, i.e., love. And again, this is an impossibility.
(NOTE: It is true that during salvation God does away with a part of our being, i.e., the disposition of sin, but this is an act of the Creator on the created. There is no grounds to believe or even assume that God can amputate Himself of parts of His Self. Besides, our disposition of sin is an abnormality, NOT an original part of creation).
In the end we find God in a pickle. Somehow, some way, God has to do BOTH: He has to both punish and save. Only by doing both can He remain God; to do exclusively one or the other would make Him something less than God. The question is, where can the two be reconciled?

"...love is the fulfilling of the law." (Romans 13:10b)

Here there appears to be reconciliation. here the holy law, wrought by righteousness to punish sin, is satisfied by love that can only save. How exactly can this be? CAN it be? It cannot be any love of ours: our fallen hearts make the sacrifice necessary for love (for love is sacrifice) an impossibility. We can only gush up (at best) selfish sentiment, or (at worst) selfish lust. The only love pure, true, and high enough to satisfy the law is divine love, Love Himself, and that love was manifested in the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ said He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17). According to Romans 13:10, He could only fulfil it through love. Christ was given out of God's love (John 3:16, duh), and He is the proof of God's love (Romans 5:8). Christ said that the purest, highest, and truest love is the one that dies for those that it loves (John 15:13), which is exactly what Jesus did. Sacrifice, or better yet REDEMPTION, is what satisfies God's law (and His righteousness to use it) AND God's love. The solution to The Dilemma of Being (and just when I started liking that name), the reconciliation of law and love, is Christ Jesus.

The implications of this solution are PROFOUND. Recap quickly: God's righteousness and love are NOT mere characteristics or habits: things that were absent from His being but came upon Him over time. No, they are ABSOLUTES, i.e., Reality, "a priori" truths. God IS those things. That you remember.
However, that would mean that the dilemma of being is an absolute as well, an "a priori" truth. Then that would also mean that the solution to the dilemma of being is an absolute as well (for a God of order would never allow a contradiction in His being). Therefore, the sacrifice of Christ was no mere martyrdom, political execution, or even just a payment for sin. Christ passion is an absolute: it HAD to be, it had ALWAYS been. Redemption is an absolute objective reality, the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." (Revelations 13:8b) It always has been, it HAD to have been, and nothing can e'er change that.