Applying the Gospel

Relational brokenness is everywhere. It’s a feature of our world as regular as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the closed system of the universe, everything tends toward decay, disorder, and disintegration—including relationships. The cosmos is like a wagon wheel, and we’re the spokes, but the center is missing and we’re grasping for anything to fill that spot to hold it all together.

We like to try to build relationships on things like shared affinities, shared complaints, shared perspectives, shared goals. We feel that, if only we shared “X,” then we’d have real relational connections (where “X” = things like love of food and drink, parenting strategies, political views, favorite sports teams, musical tastes, et cetera). But these things can’t bear the weight of our relationships. Our interests wax and wane, and we’re constantly looking for excuses to separate ourselves from each other, anyway. Relationships can’t survive when the glue that holds us together is brittle.

In the church we’re not immune to this problem. We have what Dietrich Bonhoeffer condemns as “wish-dreams.” We have certain ideals that we believe, if we could just achieve them, would mean true community. We haven’t arrived there yet, but if we could just attain “X,” we’d have the true church (where “X” = things like whatever characterized the early church that no longer characterizes us, a perfect articulation of theology, a particular ministry or worship expression, et cetera). These things will never materialize in satisfactory ways for all of us, so we usually feel frustrated that the church isn’t meeting our expectations for community, for relationships. We cannot achieve a solid foundation for true community based on our own ideas or resources. Instead, Bonhoeffer proclaims the Gospel when he writes:

“Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us… Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality.” (Life Together, emphasis mine).

True community, real relationship with one another in the church, is not something out there in front of us that we could attain if we just found the right glue. True community is a divine reality behind us, underneath us, already accomplished for us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In Ephesians, Paul says that the creation of the church out of fragmented, warring, divisive people is already a result of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. He is God’s plan for cosmic unity (1:10). He’s the hub at the center of the cosmic wagon wheel, and we are spokes that have already been reconnected to God through him. He himself is the substance of our relationships. All these other things we try to build relationships on, the shared affinities—even shared time—amount to nothing more than wispy cobwebs hanging between spokes on that wheel.

The unity that we have in Christ is spiritual, that is, it comes through his Spirit. The Spirit of God is the Uniter of Persons. From all eternity, the Father’s initiating, loving self-gift to his Son is the one Spirit, and the Son’s responsive, loving self-gift to his Father is the one and same Spirit. He is the Holy Spirit because he is utterly distinct from our spirits. Our spirits tend toward division. He is the Spirit of love, the Spirit of unity. Since all believers, together, share in the one Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:11-14), we all, together, are the one, holy, catholic (universal) church. The same Spirit who unites the Persons of the Trinity in love is the one who unites us to God and to each other in Christ, no matter what differences might otherwise characterize us. So, we already have a more profound, lasting unity in the church than we could ever hope to achieve apart from him.

“Good news! Jesus has created the church!” This actually is a historical, objective, cheerful reality, but it is not instinctive or obvious for us to celebrate. It is a matter for our faith. We must believe that Christ has done what we could never do in knitting us together in himself, because there is still the tendency toward division in our hearts. We must see one another in Christ. We must assess the nature and measure the quality of our relationships based on something invisible to us, on the fixed reality of the Gospel. We must let the spiritual nature of our unity determine our relational commitment to each other. Our commitment to each other should reflect our commitment to Jesus, who said, “As you did to the least of these my brothers, you did to me” (Matt. 25:40).

If, by faith, we can see our spiritual unity in Christ, we will have the resources we need to live in our relationships together. We can stay together, talk about and work through conflict. We can be patient and kind. We can open ourselves up, be vulnerable, and share our real struggles. We can ask forgiveness and extend forgiveness. In the body of Christ there’s no such thing as “irreconcilable differences.” In Christ, “unity” is God’s final word over the universe, and you can let that good word into your life and relationships now through faith in him, through your relationship with him.

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)

We are reluctant to acknowledge our own sinfulness. Sin hides itself from scrutiny. This is a feature of our sin; in our self-centeredness, we will not allow ourselves to know how bad we really are. Being truly honest with ourselves is a tremendous challenge. We imagine it would ruin us to confess our sins. We imagine that we would suffer rejection from God and others, that it would be unbearable to live with ourselves. So we erect barriers to real self-knowledge. (It fascinates me that I am so internally divided that I can effectively deceive myself and not be aware of doing so.) We live in denial. We create illusions of self-righteousness (hypocrisy). We keep others at a distance to avoid confrontation with our own sinfulness. This resistance to self-knowledge infects all our lives and relationships.

The Gospel dismantles our fears, enabling us to truly examine ourselves, to confess our sins. When God’s grace to you in Christ begins to saturate your thinking, granting you the assurance of his love in spite of your sin, then you can let down your guard and take an honest look inside. The main purpose of this self-awareness is not so much that you can change what you find there, fixing yourself through a better self-diagnostic. Rather, the purpose is so that you can further rely on God’s grace in Christ for real forgiveness and transformation. An accurate self-diagnosis should lead you to the true remedy for your ailment: Jesus Christ for life. Taking an honest look at yourself should lead you to look away from yourself and to fix your eyes on Christ. It’s only the assurance that this whole process is really good for you that liberates you to engage in it.

This is the key to counseling with the Gospel, “log-and-speck counseling.” It is only people who have done the hard work of applying the Gospel to their own internal struggles, who have been honest with themselves in light of God’s grace, who have found liberation and hope and peace in Jesus Christ who can help others to do the same. Hypocrites who remain resistant to self-knowledge can’t help people with the Gospel, because they haven’t yet let the Gospel do its work in their lives. But once you deal with the log in your own eye, you really can help others with the specks in their eyes. Notice that the result of addressing your own problems first is not that you just stop picking on others for their problems, but that you gain the true ability to help them with their problems. Loving others in a non-judgmental way doesn’t mean leaving others alone, it means graciously addressing their faults, trying to help them change, caring about what you see is wrong with them because you’ve seen the same thing in yourself.

This is not just the way to prepare yourself to be in a position to help others, it also suggests a method or tactic for doing so. Notice that the person you are helping is your brother, sharing your nature. And notice that logs and specks are made of the same material: wood. Gospel counseling is empathetic and confessional. This approach is gracious, not condemning, because you begin with your own humble confession rather than from a place of superiority. I understand this person’s problem because I am just like this person, and I have the same kind of problem. Jesus helps me with my problem, so I know he can help this person. This person is probably unwilling even to admit the problem, unwilling to do honest self-evaluation, just like I am before I’m convinced of God’s love for me in Christ. This person needs the freedom of the Gospel, just like I do. I can actually demonstrate Gospel freedom by confessing my own faults, which are of the same nature as this person’s faults. This freedom to admit things about ourselves that we’re all prone to hide from ourselves is startlingly powerful. To confess your sins from a place of joyful peace in Christ, rather than with despair, is something that helps others to taste and see that the Lord is good, and to turn to him for life.

Last week, the leaders of an influential church in San Francisco issued a letter to their congregation stating that, when receiving members into the church, they would “no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining.” This means they would no longer hold the biblical position shared historically throughout the church that homosexuality is a matter for repentance (alongside many other aspects of our rebellion against God and our created nature). Their argument appears to lean heavily on their own understanding of what is good for people in their relationship to God. They write:

Our pastoral practice of demanding life-long “celibacy”, by which we meant that for the rest of your life you would not engage your sexual orientation in any way, was causing obvious harm and has not led to human flourishing… Imagine feeling this from your family or religious community: “If you stay, you must accept celibacy with no hope that you too might one day enjoy the fullness of intellectual, spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical companionship. If you pursue a lifelong partnership, you are rejected.” This is simply not working and people are being hurt.

I will confess, for myself and on behalf of God’s people (if I may), that we have not cared as we ought for the real sufferings of others. We censure those whose struggles seem foreign to us. We are blind to the damage done in our relationships by our hypocrisy. I have no right to condemn others for their sin, because I, too, am a sinner; knowing this has not stopped me from condemning others in my self-righteousness. Judging each other is the kind of thing sinners do, regularly. This is exactly why I need the grace of God that is found in Jesus Christ. I need the real forgiveness and transformation which are found in the Gospel. Every single one of us needs the exact same thing, to be rescued from ourselves by Jesus and refashioned into his image. Every one of us needs to repent and believe the Gospel.

Telling people to repent, to stop their specific rebellion as God has clearly defined it, is not the same thing as condemning them. Telling people to turn away from sexual sin to the living and true God is not the same thing as consigning them to a life of loneliness and misery, without hope of human flourishing. On the contrary, telling people to repent of sin, to realign their lives with God’s stated purpose, is the only way out of misery, the true path toward real human flourishing as God intends. Repentance means turning away from our self-generated vision of what is good for us, and turning toward God’s revealed purpose for our lives.

Apart from God’s revelation, we might not even know that we were in rebellion against God, let alone the actual specifics of what constitutes our rebellion. If we’re going to be saved from ourselves, if we’re going to turn away from sin to God, we need sin clearly defined for us. Homosexuality is not arbitrarily declared a sin—there is a reason why it is sinful. God clearly defines homosexuality as a distortion of his true intention for our sexuality, a distortion brought about by our sinful rebellion against God. In the creation of humanity, sexuality is intended to reflect the other-oriented love of the Trinity. When the Bible says that humanity was created in God’s image, the emphasis falls on the reality of two distinct sexes created for unity in their diversity. The other-ness is essential for the reflection of the image of God. The union of the two sexes in marriage is the basic relationship in society through which the image of God is reflected (and advanced through procreation). In marriage, someone who is a human person in one way is united to someone who is a human person in a fundamentally different way; a man gives himself entirely to the other (woman), not to the same (another man).

The very root of our problem as sinners is self-love, self-absorption, which goes straight against loving the other as we were created to do. In Romans 1, the ultimate result of this self-centered rebellion against God is utter self-absorption, the total inability to truly love the other, where even our most intimate sexual relationships are more like making love to a mirror image of ourselves than truly loving someone who is a person in a different way. Homosexuality is the extending of our self-love outward: my way of being a person, right there in front of me, loving me. (I don’t mean to express or condone hatred of those with homosexual desires or practices. Nor do I mean to suggest that homosexual relationships are absolutely void of any semblance or aspect of good relationships.)

Biblically, theologically, it makes sense that repenting of homosexuality would be severely difficult for self-absorbed people, for those who have bent their most intimate relationships around themselves so thoroughly, for those whose identities are deeply rooted in something that goes straight against their sexual nature as beings created in the image of the Triune God. It’s not hard to understand why there would be depression, addiction, and suicide. True repentance on any scale is impossible for those who disbelieve God’s love for them. The gravity of self-love (i.e., slavery to sin) is strong, and we cannot break free from it on our own. We are in desperate need of true love, and of becoming truly loving. Only in the love of the Triune God is true human flourishing found, which is freely available through the grace of Jesus Christ.

By his gracious love, overcoming your absolute and pervasive self-love, you can be in a relationship with him that brings about the complete renewal and reordering of your whole life in alignment with his good will. The only alternative to sinful self-centeredness is in turning to the one, true, living and Triune God. And if you’re doing that, you must turn away from sin; sin and God are mutually exclusive. Relationship with God, then, means pursuing holiness according to his revealed will. Homosexuality is one of the many aspects of our sinful self-centeredness, as God himself reveals it, that we must necessarily turn away from when we turn to him.

You should not view repentance as dashing your hopes for companionship and flourishing. You can only view it as such if you equate sin with flourishing, if you only allow for companionship according to your own definition. That’s like saying, “I will decide what is good for me, rather than trusting God in the matter.” But that’s the essence of our rebellion! True flourishing is not found in our autonomous rebellion against God, only in right relationship to him. We were made for profound companionship—for eternal communion—which, for sinners, only comes through repentance and faith.

For all Christians this means a massive, continual upheaval of everything in life, from the inside out. We love sin, and we hate God. The final result of salvation is a complete conversion; when we are like Jesus, we will love God and hate sin. That is not a natural process. It is not something we can manage on our own. We need to pray that God would make that change in our desires, that he would give us new hearts, that he would help us to live out of our new selves in Jesus Christ. We all need to pray, “God, I love myself too much, I love sin too much, and I cannot stop because I don’t really want to. My heart is broken, my desires are distorted, I love the wrong things, and I can’t fix that problem for myself. Please forgive me, and transform me into the likeness of your Son, who taught us to pray, ‘Your will be done.'”

The whole Christian life, then, is one of turning from sinful desires to Christlike ones, by God’s grace. Homosexuality is just one of those sinful desires. True repentance will mean trusting that God’s vision for your holy life (flourishing) is infinitely better than your autonomous plan. You can see from the Gospel that God is trustworthy—he gave his Son for you! So, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding… Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh, and refreshment to your bones” (Proverbs 3:5, 7-8).

The Triune God created humanity in his own image: one humanity in distinct persons meant for communion (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:18-25). Humanity comes in two flavors, male and female. A male is human, and a female is human, though they are irreducibly different ways of being human, and both are necessary for the fullest, truest expression of humanity. One is not more or less human than the other. Humanity is not some gender-neutral, asexual trait shared by males and females, as if sexuality were peripheral to humanity, as if you could take or leave your specific gender and remain human. You cannot be “just a human,” you must be a male human or a female human, equal to and distinct from humans of the other sex. Humanity in two sexes means necessary otherness.

The creation of humanity in two sexes, and the institution of heterosexual marital union before the Fall, points to the purpose of the Trinity in all creation (of which humanity is the pinnacle). The Trinity is One in perfect communion with Other. The relationships between the equal-and-distinct Persons of the Trinity are characterized by mutual, delighted, self-giving, intimate, vulnerable love. The Triune God created in order to extend this love to others. If humanity is going to reflect God’s image, then, an individual cannot do it by himself. “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit [ally counterpart; help as opposite] for him” (Gen. 2:18). The deepest reflection will be in an intimate marital union between equal-and-distinct persons (male and female) that culminates in their love multiplying. By love we create others to love (children) who will also extend that communion of true love to yet others. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” (Gen. 1:28).

So the God of love created humanity to be like him in loving and creating. We don’t all experience the intimacy of marital union, but it is meant to be the crown and conduit of society, of human relationships. It is the greatest picture we have of the spiritual union between Jesus Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:31-32), the Bridegroom and his Bride (Psalm 45; John 3:29; Rev. 19:6-8). In fact, there is a “marital intent in everything… Marriage is the great picture of God’s intent to unite the diverse into the delight of true unity” (Peter Mead, Pleased To Dwell). God’s plan is to unite all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20). We were made for eternal communion with God characterized by intimate mutual knowledge (Jn 17:3; 1 Cor. 13:12). This spiritual relationship is meant to fill our marriages with the same life, which means mutual, delighted, self-giving, intimate, vulnerable love between spouses. “‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!’… Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:23-24). This is a holistic, comprehensive “one flesh” union of everything that makes males and females human.

In his book, The Meaning Of Marriage, Timothy Keller talks about how healthy marriages result in stronger relationships all around, while struggling marriages leave us suffering in all our relationships. This is because marital love is central to our nature as those created in God’s image. If God’s grace is at work in our lives and we experience true communion with him through Jesus Christ, then our marriages will be the first relationships renewed in true communion, and love will spread from there. The first priority, then, is our spiritual union with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. This doesn’t just mean that he is “also human like us,” but that he is the human with whom we need union, the joy of our desiring, the necessary Other. He came to deliver us from our self-love by truly loving us and giving his life for us. We fear intimacy with the One who knows our very thoughts, because we suspect it will mean our devastating rejection. But we can be truly vulnerable with Jesus in the confession of our worst sins and weaknesses, because his gracious love assures us that we will be accepted. No matter what lies deep in our hearts. No matter what characterizes our lives as those who have committed spiritual adultery against our faithful God. Jesus willingly absorbed all the pain of our treachery as he died on the cross, in order to extend absolute forgiveness and joyful acceptance to us, for a relationship that lasts forever. Now, in him, we find real freedom to be transparent with God, and we can begin to enjoy mutual, delighted, self-giving, intimate, vulnerable love.

This good news is what we need in order to truly open ourselves up in love to our spouses (and to others in our lives to lesser degrees). It won’t be easy. There will be conflict. But in Christ you really do have the resources for marital intimacy.

I wrote this based on the phrase, “Our Father,” in the Lord’s Prayer. Please feel free to use this in your personal or public Worship.

~

Our Father in heaven, you are over all and through all and in all. All things come from you. We exist for you.
We praise you for all your works, especially in our creation and redemption.

Holy Father, no one has ever seen you, except the One who is at your side.
We thank you for making yourself known to us through your Son, Jesus Christ.

Eternal Father, you loved the Son before the foundation of the world. By your grace you have loved us even as you have loved him.
We love you because you first loved us. We want to know you and love you even as your Son knows you and loves you.

Merciful Father, you did not spare your own Son, but gave him up for us all.
We believe that you sent Jesus to die on the cross to forgive our sins.

Father of glory, you raised your Son from the dead, and you have given all things into his hands.
We tremble at your power over life and death. We submit to the authority of your Son.

Father, you have sent the Spirit of your Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
We adore you for adopting us as your sons and daughters through Christ. We rejoice that you have qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

Father of lights, every good and perfect gift comes from you.
We thank you for your daily care for our physical needs. Please keep our hearts from loving the gifts more than the Giver.

Father of spirits, what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
We trust that you love us, and that you are forming Christ in us through our temporary sufferings. Please have mercy on us in the weakness of our faith, and make us ready for heaven.

Father of the fatherless and protector of widows, you love justice and mercy.
We want to be more like you. Please help us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to put their needs before our own.

We join your Beloved Son in the prayer he taught us, saying:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 (visually arranged here) is one of the most familiar passages in the Bible. In spite of our familiarity, many do not appreciate it for what it actually is. The mistake is made because of modern cultural expectations that we bring to our reading of the text. We imagine it to be a primitive attempt at science, to be squared with—or refuted by—”actual science.” We assume it’s trying to answer questions of process: “How?” “When?” “In what order?” But those are the wrong questions. It isn’t some sort of dry, objective, scientific treatise. We should let the text speak for itself. Or, sing, as the case may be.

This passage is a song. You see careful structure, artistic patterns, repeated refrains, atmospheric themes. The Holy Scriptures open with a song. The first thing God has revealed about himself is that he is a God of song who delights over his Creation (cf. Job 38:4-7; Zephaniah 3:17). The Bible is full of songs, including songs about God as Creator and his Creation (e.g., Psalms 8, 19, 29, 104, 148). God’s very being is song, the hum of love of Father for Son in the Spirit. God makes himself heard in Creation.

We are moved to song by what we love. We sing to those whom we love. The singer cares, and that care compels him to communicate the depth of his care through song. Songs convey profound meaning, significance, value, personality; machines don’t sing, people sing. Songs are revealing, intimate; the singer’s heart is on display through his voice. This makes for a beautiful opening to the Scriptures, a wonderful recital of God’s original purpose in his Creation, his celebration of it.

There is a crescendo: “‘Let us make man in our image…’ and behold, it was very good” (1:26, 31). Kingly creatures for communion with the singing God.

There is a refrain: “And there was evening and there was morning” (1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). Post tenebras, lux. Darkness, then dawn. Six times, almost complete.

There is a sustained ending: “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested…” (2:3). The divine presence entered the temple he had made, to dwell with his Creation. Glory. Perfection. Fulfillment. Joy. Everything is the way it’s supposed to be. But, the Song ends without conclusion. No “evening… morning… the seventh day.”

The Song continues, even now. It was, in a way, dampened by the loud din of human rebellion, the sound of the world breaking. But the angels renewed the Song at the birth of Jesus Christ, the new human, “God with us.” There was darkness on the evening of his death, but the universe rang again with the Song of Life at the dawn of the third day, at the first crack of Resurrection sunlight. In himself, Jesus is the temple, the new creation, the perfect communion of God with his kingly creature in one Person. Now he sits, the divine presence with humanity, resting, dwelling, ruling in heaven. And one day, soon, with the music of trumpets, the Everlasting Dawn will rise over the New Heavens and the New Earth, and all things will be how they were meant to be from the beginning.

Keep the Sabbath holy. It’s the best part of the Song that God is singing.

God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”…
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
(Genesis 1:26-27)

Consultation within the Godhead resulted in the creation of humanity in God’s image. (This can be understood as the first prayer among the Persons of the Trinity recorded in the Bible.) If humanity is made in the image of the Triune God, then humanity is intended to reveal something about God. And we would not expect to understand humanity without knowing this God. If we no longer know the God in whose image we were made, then how can we truly know ourselves, our identity, our significance, our purpose as a race?

Being created in God’s image means enjoying the glory of love, the unity of variety. There is one God whose being is three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. This God made humanity, one race in two sexes: male and female. Humanity is not expressed fully in an individual, in just one of the sexes. Humanity is a corporate, relational reality. “In its basic form, humanity is fellow-humanity… Humanity which is not fellow-humanity is inhumanity” (Karl Barth). This means that you, as an individual, cannot reflect God’s image on your own. You need others.

In our self-love we violate our created nature and purpose. One is not “doing humanity” well when one is absolutely independent, self-sufficient. (Have you ever confessed the sin of being “a high-capacity individual” who doesn’t need others?) Strangely, when one ceases to live for God and others, and one becomes absorbed with oneself, one ceases to be able to truly know oneself. We may truly know ourselves only in relationship to the Triune God in whose image we are made. The “human” individual who is characterized by self-love is, at best, a distorted image of the God who is love. We can no longer look at self-absorbed, individualistic “humanity” and know what we’re meant to know about God. (This is why it’s impossible for us to reason or imagine our way to the true God. If we think God is like us, we’ll come up with religions that portray God as supremely self-centered—more like the devil than the Triune God.)

Jesus Christ is the true image of the invisible God, not just because he is God the Son himself, the Creator, “of one substance with the Father,” but because he is also the true Human, in his created nature reflecting the image of God as originally intended. He took our humanity and restored it to its original brilliance, so that we can look at God the Son in his humanity and know what God is like. Now, when you look at Jesus, you see the glory of the love of God. You see that true deity and true humanity are gloriously compatible.

In and of ourselves, we “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But in Christ we are “conformed to the image of his Son,” and God has glorified us (Romans 8:29-30). He has given us his own glory, the glory of love (John 17:22-24). In Christ we have a “new self,” and “new humanity,” which is “being renewed… after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10), “created after the likeness of God in true holiness and righteousness” (Ephesians 4:24). “We all… beholding the glory of the Lord [Jesus], are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18). In our spiritual union with the Human who is the true image of God, as we behold the glory of love in him, we are renewed to reflect the glory of love again. Our nature, identity, and purpose as humanity created in God’s image are recovered and rediscovered in Jesus Christ.

Now, in Christ, you can know the Triune God and join him in communing prayer and love. You can engage with fellow-humanity as originally intended, enjoying the glory of love, the unity of variety. You can see God’s image in other people, treating even the least of all people—the hungry, thirsty, estranged, naked, sick, and imprisoned—as you would treat Jesus Christ himself (Matthew 25:31ff), with honor and service. You can stop living just for yourself or your family or your tribe, and truly love your neighbor, whomever that might be. You can give yourself to community, to the church, without fear of losing your identity. You can allow others their places in the community. You can even allow others to serve you, because you can’t do this “humanity” thing all on your own.

In the beginning was the Word… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:1, 14)

In Surprised By Joy, C. S. Lewis writes of his conversion to the Christian faith. He spent his youth haunted by “Joy,” an “enormous bliss” (to quote Milton), a bittersweet stab, “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction,” something that “makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.” He tasted it in memories, in Wagner, in vast landscapes and fairy tales and Norse mythology. He pursued it, sought to manufacture it, tried to capture it when he found it. But it was always just a fleeting taste that slipped away as soon as he noticed it.

He came to realize that the thrill, the Joy he pursued was not so much a thing in itself, as an effect of Something Else. “Only when your whole attention and desire are fixed on something else—whether a distant mountain, or the past, or the gods of Asgard—does the ‘thrill’ arise. It is a by-product. Its very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer.” (The Joy disappears the moment you turn from the “Something Else” in order to grasp at it.)

Ultimately Lewis discovered that he didn’t want Joy, per se, but that the Joy he thought he wanted was itself the desire for God. “It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.” It took a paradigm shift, a change in perspective, finally to look away from the pointer toward that to which it pointed. And so Lewis found God. And he knew that, in fact, God was the One who had led him to this discovery.

We need the same paradigm shift when we consider Christmas. We want our feelings stirred. We want an almost magical sense of belonging, of warmth, sparkling delights, feasting, merriment, lights pushing against the darkness… of Home. Our longing is nostalgic, but often reflects more of our imagination than our experience or memory. It’s like a homesickness for a Home we’ve never been. We decorate and prepare and try to create an atmosphere where these feelings might come true. We would bottle it all if we could. But this longing is characterized by the deep sense that we don’t actually have what we’re trying to capture. We long for the Home we lack.

Here is the change in perspective: the real force of Christmas is that our longings no longer tell us what we lack; they tell us what we have in Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God, the Word who stands at the beginning and the end of all things, the Word who came to us. In him God speaks to us, and his message is peace, belonging, joy, Home. Our longings for these things are “a pointer to something other and outer,” and that Other, that Something Else, is Jesus Christ. And we have him, because of Christmas, because he came and gave himself to us. We have him. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

The Desire of Nations has already come. Because of the Incarnation of the Son of God, because of his initiative to invade this world and your life with his grace, when you consider Christmas you may consider all your deepest longings already met and guaranteed. When you decorate with lights, you can celebrate the Light of the World who already shines in the darkness. When you feast, you can be satisfied by the Bread of Life who already gave himself for your immortal soul. When you gather by the fire, you can rest and delight in knowing you have a true Home, eternal in the heavens, prepared by Christ, with God as your Father. These things are all true, whether or not you have an earthly home or an earthly family or an earthly feast this Christmas season. Christmas means, in spite of all things seemingly to the contrary, Home has come to you forever in the Person of Jesus Christ.

“Ultimately the problem is not a SKIN problem, it is a SIN problem” (Benjamin Watson, football player for the New Orleans Saints). There is a lot of talk about racism centered on recent events in Ferguson. Much of it is characterized by divisiveness, proclaiming what is wrong with “those people over there.” People condemn other people for what they perceive to be the real problem. Ask as you read: Is the author making himself out to have the best vantage point on a complicated matter that others don’t seem to be able to comprehend? Does he belittle those who disagree with him? When he points out the heart of the problem, does he include himself among those with potential fault? If he presents a solution, does it involve his own change at a deep level, or does it only demand the change of others? Is the tone antagonistic? When you read it, are you tempted to feel superior to others, or distinct from others? It may be that such writers are contributing to the real problem rather than helping.

On a personal level, racism isn’t that mysterious or complicated. It’s in our nature to find any available reason to distinguish ourselves from others. Every single one of us does that, all the time. I want to be better than you, intrinsically, for everything that makes me me and not you. You want the same thing. We use our uniqueness, our individuality, to create distance for the sake of self-exaltation. We’ll exaggerate our differences, imagining them to be so deep, so fundamental, so essential, that clearly we’ll be justified in never questioning our superiority based on these things. It’s no wonder that we’d use skin color as one of many everyday strategies in the self-exaltation project. “How obvious could it be? It’s right there on the surface, for everyone to see. Just imagine the vast differences that lurk beneath the surface…”

That’s nothing mysterious or complicated. That’s right at the heart of our problem as sinful human beings. If we’re blind to it in ourselves, it’s not because it’s a difficult concept to grasp, it’s because we refuse to grasp it. People in the pursuit of self-exaltation hate to be made aware of the fact that they’re in the pursuit of self-exaltation. (Apparently it’s difficult to be self-righteous about true self-awareness.)

Now, things might get a bit more complicated when you begin to consider societal structures, ways in which those of us with “power” have shaped the surroundings in order to give expression to our preferred illusions of self-exaltation. It’s a hideous, tangled web created when supremely self-centered individuals find ways to advance themselves in the presence of (in league with?) other supremely self-centered individuals.

But ultimately, as Benjamin Watson said, “it is a sin problem.” What we all share in the universal problem of sin is far more profound than any distinctions we like to make among ourselves based on individual traits. (In fact, there are many profound things universal to human beings that should unite us despite the differences we like to amplify.) I’m just as self-centered as you are. We’re all in this boat together. When we talk about racism, when we condemn it as a societal problem, we should just assume that it’s “my” problem, “our” problem… rather than “his” problem. And when we consider a solution, it should be a solution to the real problem—our real problem—sin. Then, with Watson, we can be encouraged because God has already addressed our real problem in the person and work of his Son Jesus Christ. We don’t have to be overwhelmed with despair when we consider the problem, because there’s a wonderful solution already available to us in the Gospel.

We all were made in the image of the Triune God, the God whose Being is Three Persons, distinct but inseparable. This means we were made for community together, mutual love, true self-giving. The individual traits we were given are meant, not to divide, but to make the unity more glorious, more “colorful.” We’ve all gone precisely against our created purpose in our pursuit of self-exaltation, first and foremost in exalting ourselves over and against our Creator. But, by his grace, God forgives our sins and creates us anew in his image. We might highlight the differences between our personal, cultural, ethnic stories, but we all share a “sin story,” and we need a new one. We have been freely given a new story in the Gospel. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the perfectly selfless human, lived for us. His story is our new story. His love is ours, his dignity is ours, his power is ours, his glory is ours. And his death is ours—in it, our self-centered self died, so that we could be raised to a new life in his resurrection, a new life standing forgiven and accepted by God, a new life together, where our individual gifts are meant to glorify and delight the whole, rather than set us apart from each other.

Politics won’t get us there. Money won’t get us there. Public demonstrations won’t get us there. Blogs, articles, and books won’t get us there. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has already gotten us there. (Read Ephesians to see how the church is, already, a result of the Gospel—but that’s another post.) The Kingdom of God is materialized in this world wherever people believe the Gospel. So believe it.