Our True Nature Exposed

There is nothing new under the sun. The tools may have changed but the motivation and the outcome have been witnessed countless times. There is no great deed that has not already been done. There is no sin that has not already been committed. There is nothing you can do that will surprise or shock Yahweh. There is nothing happening now that has not happened before.

As we watch society slip further into darkness we need to understand it has always been there. The things we are seeing in the open have always been there behind closed doors. The unholy scenes we see displayed on our television screens have always been in the heart. Realize for a moment that what you are seeing is feeding an awakening appetite or we wouldn't tolerate it. All we are seeing is the pretending coming to an end and the true nature of things being revealed.

The fool has said in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt,
They have done abominable works,
There is none who does good. (Psalm 14:1)

"Good" is defined by Yahweh. Good can only take place from the seed of Jesus. The only good that has any eternal value never grows from the wicked heart of man unless that heart has been transformed by the blood of Jesus. Any good thing we can manage on our own is tainted by the human condition in which we were born.

The psalmist wrote the truth about the condition of our kind since the expulsion from the garden. Left to ourselves we are fools. We have been corrupted by the evil of our rebellion. We have done abominable things as defined by our holy and perfect Father. No matter how hard we try, the things we intend for good are corrupted by the evil of our heart. 

But Jesus changed all of this.

Jesus made it possible for Father to declare that we are holy; that we are perfect; that we are righteous. Those who choose to be covered by the sacrifice of Jesus are transformed from the corruption that had enslaved them and are made as a new creation. We can't do it on our own. We need Jesus.

 

I Want To Be Accused Of Being An Imitator

If you want to be extraordinary, love your enemies. If you want to be like Jesus, love your enemies. If you want to be called children of Father, love your enemies. If you truly want to belong to Jesus, to walk in his footsteps, to be everything he has called you to be, allowing the Spirit to work through you, then you must be determined to obey Jesus' commands and to do what he did. Jesus said:

But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return ... (Luke 6:25a) 

You see, being a Christian is not a tradition that is handed down to you by your family. It is not a philosophy of living. It is not "pie in the sky" that ushers in utopia on this earth. It is a transformation that moves us to a place of extravagant love expressed through strong action. It is the denying of self for the purpose of promoting the welfare of others. It is an impossibility to manufacture in ourselves. It is far beyond the reach of our limited abilities but nothing is impossible for Yahweh.

The Word tells us what the Holy Spirit is doing in and through us. Our limited capacity is changed, walls come tumbling down, limitations are removed and we are filled with Father's capacity to love. That is what Jesus told us:

... your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. (v. 25b)

We will be transformed so that we will love like Daddy loves because we will take on his character. Every child takes on some of the behavioural characteristics of his parents. This is not passed on by genetics but is learned behaviour. The Spirit gives us new capacity through the transformation but it is only by observing Father (through the Son) that we learn what is expected of us. Love your enemies, do good without restraints. Don't hold back because of your thinking and prejudices. Don't allow personal feelings to get in the way of Father's extravagance in love. What does that look like?

If you want to know what Father's love looks like and how it has impacted us, look no further than the gift of himself through the Son, Jesus. He laid it all out for us, walking through the experience of torture so he could reach the goal of the sacrificial lamb, lifted high upon a cross. We can't even begin to describe such extravagance, but is the same unrelenting love we are to give to our enemies. Are you there yet?

Most likely most of us reading and writing these words are not near to being there yet. We live in a culture where you are more important than your neighbour. We live in a culture that holds up justice for the individual, as long as that individual is not in his mother's womb. We believe the individual is so important that we will stomp all over the rights of others just to lift up that one person. We fight for the equality of one group at the cost of inequality for all the others. The problem is, we all want to be that individual; we all want to be that special group; we want all the attention focused on us. This makes it hard for us to relate to "love your enemies". Nonetheless, it is what Jesus said we need to do, reflecting the character of Father who is "kind to the ungrateful and those who are wicked".

In case we missed the point, there is no room in the Christian vocabulary for the phrase, "How dare you ...", or, "I have the right...". We are too concerned with reflecting the character of Father to be worried about who did what against us and which of our many rights have been violated. Just think of how many rights Jesus set aside in order to demonstrate the extraordinary love of Father. To imitate Father should be the only thought on the minds of his children:

So imitate God and be truly compassionate, the way your Father is. (v.36) 

The Word says it, the Spirit does it but our will must desire it. There is no judgment coming from this writer but the facts should speak for themselves. Look in the mirror, reflect on your behaviour and attitude, ask yourself if your love for Jesus has brought you the point of obedience to his commands, and take careful note if you are imitating Father. Are you imitating him? Are you extraordinary because of your demonstrated love for your enemies? Do you do good every day without any restraints? You have been transformed by Jesus, changed, made new, and now you have the capacity to be an imitator of Father. It is a learned behaviour. Watch what he does, and do it.

What Are We Missing?

If you were to take a survey of family and friends, what do you think they would list as your number one strength? Is it your charm? Perhaps your whit? Maybe you have superior intellect or great musical ability? Could it be your talent for making and keeping friends? Loyalty, dependability, determination, maturity? It's funny how some people see traits in us that we would never see in ourselves. But would any of your friends say you are a person of grace?

I have met some awesome people in my time. Some were great preachers and others great evangelists. I have met prophets and teachers whose revelation and understanding make me look like a beginner in God's Word. But whatever we are and whatever we have can all be made useless without a practical application of God's grace. It is only in the context of God's love that we can begin to grasp the profoundness and the life impacting nature of grace.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the Apostle Paul spent so much precious time encouraging Timothy in this, in his last letter to his friend. He writes:

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 2:1)

So many people want to walk in Jesus' footsteps but fail to understand those steps are things of grace. Every minute he lived here, every breath he took, every step he made, every word he spoke were done in the grace of God. We didn't deserve any of it.The only thing we had earned was God's wrath but here he was rescuing us in an action of grace to his enemy and setting an example of how we have been transformed. Yes, we were transformed to be vessels of this great ointment called grace.

If you say you love Jesus and yet hold on to even a pebble of hatred, you have not really experienced the love of God. If you become impatient easily, avoid certain people, love some more than others, then you have not grasped the nature of God's grace. If you keep a list of wrongs, fail to forgive wrongs done to you, find it impossible to be kind to those who hate you, then you do not understand the true cost of following Jesus.

It is not a matter of us trying to love others. No matter how hard we try we will never be able to find it in ourselves to love as God loves. We don't have it in ourselves to be like Jesus. Many have tried; all have failed. We can become like a good person. We can become a person people admire as we allow our strong traits to shine through and try to keep our bad ones hidden. But in Jesus nothing is hidden that will not be exposed.

The only way we can live the grace that we have been shown is by allowing Jesus to live through us. We have to die to ourselves, stop pushing for what we want, stop running from God to gain the world. We have to empty ourselves and allow the Spirit of God to have full control so that the anointing of God will be on us, and the new character, the character of Jesus will be seen by all. Then we will live a life of grace. Then the world will see the difference and know there is a difference. They may hate us for it but at least they will know.

Would your friends say grace is a word that describes you?

What Are You?

There is no getting around it, Christians are different. We are not different because we set out to be that way but because the Jesus in us makes us different. We can't wake up in the morning and decide that we are going to be more loving today. If we try then it is simply us trying to do things the old way. Before we met Jesus we use to try to improve ourselves and it always ended in failure so why do we think we can still try to do it that way and get different results? No, Christians are different because of Jesus not because we have decided to improve ourselves.

We are different because having the Holy Spirit in us changes things. We are different because we are being transformed by our Father to be just like the first born, Jesus. Our part in it is to get out of the way and allow God to do it. Too often we fight against him in the transformation process, kicking and screaming and refusing to change. That causes quite the confusion in us, like a tug of war. But our God will not fight against us, so if we are determined to live by our old nature he will let us be. But then, we are neither different nor Christian. We may carry the title of Christian but we aren't the real thing.

The Word of God gives us certain signs that we should see in ourselves if we are truly a new creation, truly a follower of Jesus. Again, these are not things we produce in ourselves through self-improvement but things that are produced in us by the Holy Spirit. We find some of these signs in Ephesians 4:

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. (v. 2)

Remember the list of the Fruit of the Spirit, meaning the things that are produced in us by the Spirit of God in us:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

The only way these things are produced in us is by spending more time with Jesus. The more time we spend with him the more of his character becomes ours. The more effort we put into that relationship, into surrendering, in keeping in step with the Spirit, the more we will see this character of Jesus in us.

If we are a person who is known for his anger, bitterness, depression, ambition, word breaking, roughness and such, we should know that there is something wrong. We can't claim to follow Jesus and then fail to be like Jesus. We can't conform to these things and expect to last very long. Christianity is not about conforming to rules and attitudes but is all about being transformed by the Spirit with the character of Jesus.

It is not something you learn; it is something you are.

So take stock of who or what you are today. Take note of the direction you are heading in. Consider what others are seeing in you. Ask yourself if your life is being lived to the maximum for God's glory or your own. You have been given the freedom in your choices so choose as you wish to choose. But please, don't claim to be something you are not. Either you are for Jesus, living a completely surrendered life for God's glory, or you are against Jesus, living in your rebellion and pursuing your own direction. You can't be both.

Look to the signs in your life. What are you?