Nicodemus (witness number four) ...

Often Christians seem to feel compelled to confront the errors in another person’s ideology, point out to them the error of their ways, and walk away from the encounter feeling better about themselves.  Nicodemus was a religious leader of his day.  A church official of sorts; Nicodemus was wealthy, educated, a man of renown, of influence, he had a reputation to maintain, and a set of doctrines based on the “truth” of the scriptures he and his contemporaries interpreted.  But Christ presented an anomaly, He broke the laws of physics, and preached a message counter to everything Nicodemus had been taught.  When the rules of physics are broken, then perhaps what we perceive to be true is really nothing more than perception.  So Nicodemus must investigate this phenomenon, He must seek out this anomaly, and determine what it is he does not know.  For with as much wisdom as his education, and his scriptures have offered him, they still do not seem to explain this man called Jesus.

In an effort to guard and maintain his pristine reputation, he seeks out Jesus at night.  We read these passages in the Gospel of John chapter three, beginning in verse one, and we are quick to think less of Nicodemus for being so concerned with his own reputation to seek out Jesus at night.  Because had it been us, in his place, we would have boldly sought out Christ in broad daylight, declared ourselves His most ardent disciple (move over Peter), and made sure we were the ones who Jesus could depend on in any situation, right?  But, where is our public declaration(s) at work, at school, at the mall?  And perhaps more important than carrying a sign that might identify us as Christians, where are our private declaration(s) that God and those in need alone, can easily see that we follow the God of love, and not of judgment?  Sometimes Christians are publicly Christians when the numbers and company favor being one, and conveniently silent when they do not.  Sometimes Christians declare themselves to be Christians, with placards that condemn the evil in others, instead of offering a love that might offer one steeped in evil, a reason to think differently.  Perhaps there are more night-movers in a modern church than we might at first think.  Nicodemus begins his encounter with Jesus in this way, in secret, at night, and to protect his reputation.

His opening remarks and question to Christ are couched in respect, but also in flattery.  In verse 2 Nicodemus says … “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.”  The term Rabbi is one used for respected teachers, and from his perspective, He is elevating Jesus to be a peer, a contemporary teacher, a person of respect, even though Jesus does not appear to be wealthy, or formally educated, or a man of means and influence.  Nicodemus, perhaps subconsciously, takes Jesus down a peg, by calling him a “teacher” come from God, not the Son of God.  He also refers to this, as common knowledge.  Here is the essence of modern Christianity, we come to Jesus and proceed to tell Him what we “know”.  We flatter Him with our words, while at the same time, place Him as nothing more than a contemporary of ours.  His wisdom is worth no more than our own, after all we have common sense, and an absolute certainty about what the scriptures teach us is the truth.  So we proceed to tell Jesus, what the truth is, and what is common knowledge to us.

Having been greeted in this manner, at this time of day, and knowing the reasons behind it; Jesus should have been insulted.  Here He has the perfect opportunity to put Nicodemus in his place, remind him who He is, as opposed to who Nicodemus is, in relationship to God.  Confront and correct the errors in the thinking of Nicodemus, by telling him everything about how mistaken Nicodemus is in his interpretations of scripture.  He could have told him, Hey, come back in the morning if you really care about truth, and next time, remember who My Dad is.  What’s more He could have told people after this encounter how the “respected” Nicodemus came to seek wisdom from Him, thus proving He was greater than the Sanhedrin.  Of course all these human responses to insults, and errors, do not seem to even enter the mind of Christ.  Christ did not concern himself with the implied insult of the time of day, or even with the errors in everything Nicodemus has just said.  Instead He changes the subject completely and offers Nicodemus a truth of profound spirituality, that summarizes the entire Gospel in one line.  We might call it a sound-bite in modern terminology, but it was way more than that.

In verse 3, Jesus says to him … “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  Here is a one line summary of every scripture Nicodemus has ever learned.  Here is a summation of every philosophical concept about the nature of man ever pondered by deep thinkers.  In effect, we must be re-created in order to even perceive the kingdom of God.  Jesus must deal with the blindness of Nicodemus before he will be able to even “see” the truth.  For the truth is not found in his long study of the word, it is summarized in the Person standing before him.  The voice who inspired the scriptures is now trying to open the mind of Nicodemus to begin to think differently, perceive differently, and find something that humanity on its own, is incapable of finding.  To be “born again” is not some slogan Christians wore out in the 1970’s, pairing it with “free love” and trying to associate it with “speaking in tongues”.  Being born again is about being fully re-created, the death of a carnal self-centered ideology, and the birth of a self-less-service based ideology that mimics the definition of love that Christ brought to the world.  One does not choose how to be born, this is done outside of our control.  Begin created the first time, was a decision of love made by others.  Similarly, being reborn is not something we can do for ourselves.  It is a gift of love offered to us, done for us, by the hands of the only Creator God who has ever existed.  This is what we must have, in order for the blindness of our own ideas about scripture to be fully and finally taken away.  It will take a power outside of ourselves, to remake us, in order that we might begin to “see” truth.

But Nicodemus is still blind.  So his response is a human one, based on the current laws of physics.  To Nicodemus, this idea is simply nonsense.  How could a fully grown person be reborn from his mother once again?  This is crazy talk.  Again Jesus does not rebuke Nicodemus for still being blind, or thinking He is crazy.  He does not ridicule Nicodemus, and He does not abandon what He has just summarized, instead He elaborates a bit more, again attempting to get Nicodemus to begin to “see” truth differently.  Nothing in the doctrine Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus is counter to anything taught by all the scriptures of the Old Testament.  Yet Jesus is employing none of the traditions or symbolisms upon which the entire Jewish religion is based.  Jesus did not throw the law at Nicodemus.  He did not cite the need to keep the Sabbath, or sacrifice lambs on the alter at Passover, in order for Nicodemus to finally see truth.  Those ideas Nicodemus already practiced, and despite this fact, they had not led him to the truth he was still blind to.  Attempting obedience before a re-creation is attempting to find salvation on our own, and through our own strength and ideas about truth, and it is fruitless.  Good ideas, and good intentions, are not what our Lord wants.  He wants us to see truth as truth, and this can only be accomplished if we first recognize our need for outside power to remake who we are.

In verses 4 and 5 Jesus answers Nicodemus again … “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. [verse 6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”  Here Christ points out the sequence in how this rebirth is to take place.  Being born of water, or through the symbolism of baptism, Christ points us to the need we have of rebirth.  We exist in a condition of pain.  Most of our pain is self-inflicted from the evil we embrace.  While our evil hurts others and causes ripples of pain that extend out in every direction, at the center of this pain is still us.  We hurt ourselves by what we do, and how we think, and what we want.  It is the core of us, that must be remade, reborn, re-created.  This is our so great need, and the reason why John called for repentance.  Not to simply be forgiven for what we do, but the desire to be something else.  The desire in us, to escape our state of perpetual slavery to self and pain, to sin no more; to repent, not just of what we have done, but of what we still want to do; this was the call of John in the desert.  Who you are defines what you do.

The Spirit then, is the agent outside of ourselves, that must be the mechanism, the gift of our re-creation.  It is through the Holy Spirit that Christ remakes us into the new creations He intended for us to be.  This is an act we have no more control over than we did at our first birth.  We do not get to tell the Holy Spirit how to remake us, what areas to leave alone, and what areas we think we need help in.  This is an all or nothing deal.  This is about complete renovation, not minor alterations.  This is not about our own ideas of truth.  This is about beginning to see truth for the first time clearly.  The removal of our self-inflicted blindness will only happen as we abandon our ideas, and be willing to accept a complete overhaul of who we are, how we think and what we want.  This being born of the Spirit, changes the rules of physics.  We begin to see that our perceived boundaries are really no longer true boundaries, because we exist no more as humans taking care of ourselves, but as new creations wholly reliant on God.  It is no longer our power used to defeat evil within us, it is the power of God who defeats evil within us on our behalf.  It is no longer our meager attempts at obedience, but rather true obedience from a heart that embraces the gifts God offers.  The Sabbath is no longer a chore, but a treasured time with Christ, we would not abandon for the world.  The chance to praise God in church is no longer about pretense, and social ratings, but about a treasured opportunity to say thank you to a God who has freed us from ourselves, and our bondage to selfishness.  Perceptions of reality change post a true rebirth in Christ.  What was once seen as impossible, is now merely child’s play, as we now acknowledge where all things of power can truly be found.  It is no longer us.  It is only Him.

Christ continues, by saying “Marvel not”.  In other words, don’t be so surprised Nicodemus.  You have no idea where the wind comes from or where it is going.  You do not control the wind.  Why did you think you could control “who” you are?  Why do we?  Being born of the Spirit is something that happens outside of our abilities.  We must invite it.  But we do not control it.  It controls us.  It replaces our slavery to self with the freedom that comes from self-less-ness.  Here Christ keeps the conversation centralized on “how” a person is saved from evil.  It is not about lamb’s blood at Passover.  It is not about all the traditions the religious leadership has instituted to help people “keep” the law.  It is not about how educated you are, how smart you are, how rich you are, or how healthy you are.  It is about recognizing it takes something outside of yourself to be remade into something new.  You DO NOT CONTROL it.  You benefit from it.  It is a gift.  It is the gift of salvation.  No earning it.  No buying it.  Just receiving it.  It changes who you are.

Nicodemus still clings to his own ideas about truth; ideas that are based on years of study, years of education, years of pondering the meaning of scripture.  These ideas and education have earned him prominence in Israelite society.  And in all his years, he has never even considered, that salvation came from outside of himself.  Still clinging to his ideology he again mutters … “How can these things be?”  To this stubborn clinging to human wisdom, Jesus must chide Nicodemus a bit to wake him up.  In verse 10 Jesus responds … “art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?”  From the perspective of Christ, how could you study the law, the prophets, and creation and NOT come to these conclusions?  How could all the education have led you somewhere else?  Did you not read the stories of the Old Testament and see the repeated failures of humanity, and find their success only when they trusted themselves to God?  Only when they submitted to God were the victories ever witnessed.  How could you have read so much, and missed the point entirely?  How do we?  How is it we read the Old Testament and focus on the violence of human actions, missing entirely the point of those stories.  It is only when we submit to God that His victory is wrought within us.  And just like Nicodemus that is not what we have seen.  We focus on the human actions and think that is the way we will be saved.  Here is Christ saying, you don’t get it.  That is not how it works.

Jesus continues in verse 12 … “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? [verse 13] And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.”  Here Jesus corrects what Nicodemus first said in addressing Him.  Here Jesus says, you called me a teacher come from God, but you are not accepting what I am telling you about truth.  How then can you accept what I want to tell you about heaven, where only I have been?  Jesus re-asserts his divinity.  Jesus tells Nicodemus here, it is not your ideas that define truth, it is me.  It is not your understanding that brings about salvation, it is literally your belief in Me, and in my mission.  You must accept that salvation will come from outside of yourself, and I alone am that vehicle.  Then comes the most profound and detailed verses in all of scripture about the nature and mission of Christ.

In verse 14 Jesus continues … “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: [verse 15] That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  Here is where the rubber meets the road.  Your salvation did not come through the actions of Moses, but through the belief that God could and would save you.  Here Christ says to Nicodemus, I am the sacrifice that the symbolism of the sacrificial system pointed forward to.  It will be me lifted up on a cross, for your salvation Nicodemus.  And as it was in the days of Israel of old, you will not be saved because of your actions, you will be saved because you believe that I can and I will save you.  Christ alone, being the Son of God, could do this work, fulfill this mission, and enable salvation for all of mankind.  Having done it, it would take a continued belief that God would do what He said, and change who you are, give you the rebirth, and recreation you must have in order to escape the bondage of sin.

In verse 16, Jesus articulates the reason why He, and His Father God would do this work … “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  The most quoted text in the Bible, the most repeated verse in all of scriptures, are spoken by the mouth of Christ, to the ears of Nicodemus, in the dark of night.  Praise God, that John was there to record the conversation, and preserve it for you and I.  The reason we are saved is because of the infinite love of God for us.  Our God loved us more than He loved His own life.  Our God loved us so much, that as a Father, He would willing part with His own Son, to see Him tortured and killed by the very creation He was there to redeem.  Our God, both Father and Son and Spirit, loved us this much.  That despite our lack of knowledge of truth, our intentional self-inflicted blindness, our own sense of self-worth to dare to tell God what truth is, He would still love us more than all of it, and save us from ourselves in spite of it.  Love was THE reason, we exist, and we would be saved.  This motive alone moves the actions, the mission, the words, and the deeds of Christ.  This motive alone – not to boost His own ego (He has none) – not to achieve some sort of wealth (He measures wealth in us) – not to win some sort of contest with Satan (He won that before it began).  It was love, plain and simple.  Love alone is the only reason He would do it all.

In verse 17, our very Savior continues … “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”  Here Christ lays out the purpose of His mission, and directly addresses the misconceptions that have arisen regarding the point of the Messiah.  He is not there to judge the world.  There will be no Roman overthrow.  There will be no wicked punished.  There will be no misdeeds made right, and inequalities addressed, and justice instantiated throughout the planet.  These things will not be achieved by force, but by love.  What must precede them, is the work of enabling love within us.  What must precede a perfect world of justice, is the desire for others above our own.  This rebirth cannot be attained until the mission of the Messiah has been fulfilled.  There will be no righteous judgment of condemnation upon the evil of others.  There will be instead redemption and salvation.  Despite these direct words of Christ Himself as to His own mission, modern Christians so often jump the gun, and believe the work of judgment and righteous condemnation belongs to them.  Not even Christ came to condemn.  But somehow modern Christians feel the need to compel their own ideas about truth on the lives of others, whether by law, or by placard.  What Christ alone would not do, we somehow think we are qualified to do?  The work of Christ was salvation.  Those who bear His name, should embrace His mission, not try to redefine it.

In verse 18, He continues … “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”  Jesus tells Nicodemus, I am here to save you and the world at large.  I am the vehicle of your salvation.  If you believe this you are not condemned to the life you were born to.  If you do not believe in the only Creator God is who is capable of changing who you are, you are simply embracing the person you are today, with no hope to change, no hope to be someone else, and as such, you are condemned already.  You are who you are Nicodemus.  You are who you are modern Christian.  There is no denying who you are.  Lie as you will to others.  Fight as hard as you want to deny it to yourself.  But who you are, must be remade new, reborn to Christ, if you are ever to really change and want something else.  This is the unmistakable truth about the Messiah.  Salvation comes from outside of ourselves, not within us.  It must be accepted as a gift, no other way.  To reject a belief that Christ can and will save you, is to leave yourself as you are – born of the flesh, and condemned to the slavery of serving self, and the pain that it brings.  There is only one hope outside of yourself.  There is only one offer on the table that is real, and offered by the Creator.

Then in verse 19 Christ redefines for Nicodemus and for us what “condemnation” actually means … “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. [verse 20] For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. [verse 21] But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”  Condemnation is NOT the fires of Hell, we like to think of.  It is living a life that prefers to “love darkness” rather than living free in the light and truth of God.  Being a slave is its own version of hell.  Living like we do is living under the weight of condemnation, and the pain we choose to embrace and inflict.  Our lives are the problem.  Our deeds are the cause of our pain.  It is who we are that is the hell of separation from God, because we choose it.  It is this Christ came to redeem us from.  Not just from some far off fiery lake of flames and torment, but from the here and now of the pain that comes from our sins and our choices.  This is what those who refuse to believe that Christ will save them, are doomed to experience.  Whether Christian or not, believing that salvation comes from within us, perpetuates the doom of this life, this existence, and this pattern of sin and pain.  It is only when accept the gift of Christ that our condition can finally be remade.

Notice too, the end of verse 21 referring to the deeds of truth Christ says … “they are wrought in God.”  Our actions are NOT our own, even after being remade.  They are BECAUSE of the rebirth, not to achieve it.  We do deeds of truth because of the effect of love that completely remakes us in His image.  His love has a transformative effect on our very thinking process.  Deeds that can be done in the presence of God, in the beauty of His light, that would cause us and others no shame, are those deeds inspired by love for others, more than love for self.  The absence of ego is our beginning.  The absence of self, even self-preservation, is the beginning of the love Christ offered on our behalf.  When this transformation is enacted within us, our deeds become those which are wrought in God.  Even past the act of transformation, even past the act of surrender to Christ that brings re-creation, it is still not us.  It is still acts wrought in God, not OUR acts that define our transformation.  Even past the initial re-creation is the ongoing renewal powered only by Christ and the Holy Spirit. 

This ends the encounter between the religious leader and Christ for now.  Nicodemus came to Christ, thinking he did Christ a favor, when instead everything he thought he knew, was blown away like so much dust.  How similar it is for those of us who are willing to encounter Christ today.  Everything we think we know about scripture and doctrine and tradition are blown away in the presence of such overwhelming love and redemptive power.  For it is not the interpretation of scripture where Nicodemus found truth, instead he found it in the person of Jesus Christ.  It is not in the law that Christ told Nicodemus the secret to how he would be saved.  Salvation would only come from outside of himself, and outside of us.  There is only one Creator God, and only one offer of true change, true reformation, true transformation away from the condemnation of pain we live with every day.  Rebirth, re-creation, renewal is what our God came to bring us.  He did it because He loves us, for no other reason.  His mission was not to judge or condemn but to redeem and save us from pain.  His mission has not changed.  His motive has not changed.  His love is as alive now, as it was when He walked this earth.  He does not turn Nicodemus away for his ignorance.  He welcomes the engagement and uses the opportunity to give to the world perhaps the most precious words ever spoken.  His gift is to more than just Nicodemus, or John, it is to you, it is to me.  And it has not stopped giving yet …

 

Recovery in a Petri Dish ...

In general, surgeries are performed in a sterile environment and recovery is done under close examination and in as clean and germ-free an environment as is possible.  This is done to protect the patient from a further infection and give them every opportunity to heal properly.  But in our world, our spiritual Doctor must perform His work in us under the worst of conditions, and our recovery is too often confined to a petri dish where every risk of infection is ever present and ready to retake the lost ground our Lord gives us.  The same sins we are made free from surround us on all sides.  The same friends and family that may have inadvertently inspired us to stray remain ever present in our lives, and often do the same things and say the same words that in times past helped lead to our downfalls.  So how are we to recover without relapse?  And if relapse occurs, does it negate the idea of re-creation and reformation in the first place?

For too long many Christians have espoused the idea that only isolation away from sin will help to keep them clean from it.  The idea being that a recovering alcoholic is less likely to drink in church, than in a bar.  If one avoids going to a bar, or near a liquor store, then one may avoid drinking again, or at least stand a better chance at it.  This seems to make sense.  But what happens when overindulgence of a chemical is not the sin we discuss, what happens when lust itself is the culprit?  Under this kind of logic, one would have to avoid contact with members of the opposite sex entirely.  But even if a man prone to lust avoids contact with women who attract him, he will still encounter a barrage of images in advertising, media, and the internet that could re-stoke his former passions.  Even in the church a heart prone to lust has many objects to find itself in error with.  The only way then to deny oneself the opportunity to relapse might be to move to a cabin in the woods, drop off “the grid”, and become a self-reliant hermit.  But therein lies the problem with the isolationist approach, it is an attempt to remove the idea of relapse from the work of Christ, and place it once again in human hands.  So what then is the alternative?

Surely it makes no sense for a Christian who has been given the gift of removing a certain evil from their lives to maintain a routine that in times past was a pathway to self-destruction.  Surely we must “do” something to maintain the gift God has given us?  So what might that be?  The answer for maintaining our cure, or remaining in recovery if you will, is no different than what it was to obtain the cure in the first place.  We must remain willing to be changed, and daily ask to have our Lord continue His work within us to remove every evil from our hearts and minds.  A daily commitment to release control to God is our “part” in getting the surgery from our God, and is also our part in maintaining the cure.  No other actions on our part would ever be sufficient to keep us away from temptations.  The devil has made a career out of defeating mere mortals in the arts of temptation.  Adam and Eve were likely much more difficult prey, than you or I who suffer from 6000 years of genetic influences, and a finely tuned marketing machine from which we are unable to escape.  It is therefore no more our job to attempt to avoid relapse, than it was to attempt to avoid falling in the first place.  Our role remains one of surrender to Christ, nothing more.  We must continue to trust in His work of salvation within us.

Keep in mind that part of the cure God offers is not just the cessation of sinful actions; it is the removal of sinful desires.  When once an alcoholic, the place where they craved to drink mattered little.  In fact most chemically dependent people hide bottles or drugs in all manner of places so that it is available to them “as needed”.  Under that level of disease, avoiding a bar or liquor store was no more a cure than was going to church.  A person determined to drink, who “needs” to drink, will find a way and a time to do so no matter what other level of distractions exist.  But a person who has no desire to drink, one who finds alcohol distasteful, one whose body may even react very poorly if they do drink, is not likely to find themselves drinking in any conditions.  In short, if you don’t want it, you probably will not do it.  Where before the cure, an entire regimen of time was spent in the pursuit of a drink, after the cure this time is spent in other ways.  It is made free by the cure itself.  This is the miracle our God performs, not just the ideas of a power of self-control to restrain one’s desires, but a re-creation in the core level of what one wants.  In time, the sins we once craved lose their hold over us.  We lose the desire for them, and begin to find what we once craved now something that is entirely distasteful to us.  This is not just applied to alcoholics but to those who lust, those who perpetually lie, those who gossip, those who over-eat and are unable to change, no matter what our former weakness, the cure remains the same.

We must also remember that not all change is instant and all encompassing.  The work the Lord performs within us begins to remove evil and sins one at a time, but does not make us instantly and completely sin-free.  The work will one day reach fulfillment in us, but not by tomorrow morning.  So it is unwise to believe we have been made completely “perfect” at this moment in time.  This kind of thinking places the emphasis all too often right back on self, and inevitably leads right back to failure.  The gift of a victory over a sin, is the beginning of a pattern the Lord will develop on your behalf.  One after another after another, you will find your former interests and actions giving way to new ones, and to new ways of thinking.  Under these conditions the work of perfection is actually being accomplished within you.  But as it is, we are slowly made aware of just how diseased we were, and we remain.  The more the evil is removed from us, the more we see how deep it ran, and how all-encompassing it was as a part of who we were and still are.  It is why scripture calls for us to be willing to die to self.  As we receive victory after victory our gratitude to God grows, our worship and praise to Him for what He has done in us becomes far more genuine.  It begins to find expression not only at times of worship, but in daily opportunities to love someone else.  Those acts of loving another begin to look suspiciously like the acts of Christ in His ministry here on earth; for it is Christ who inspires them, who motivates them, and who allows us to share in them.

The sin we once engaged in, and so desired, is not removed from the world around us.  It is removed from heart within us.  When gone is our desire to sin, and in its place is a deep seated love for those who remain in sin, it is not relapse we fear anymore, it is failure to share what we have experienced in receiving the victories of God over pain.  We begin to lose our fear of temptation, and instead fear only that we are too timid to reach out to those who still suffer from what we once suffered with as well.  It is not a condemnation they will require, or threats of a punishment in hell – that is the condition they exist in today.  No, our message of effect will be an altered life, a different life, a life that is so filled with love it can now no longer be ignored or denied.  The kind of change that Christ brings to the life is indeed a light in darkness that cannot be disputed.  The former alcoholic who has no desire to drink any longer has a powerful testimony to those who think themselves in recovery.  It is not merely how many days one has been clean, but it is a fundamental re-creation of how one thinks about alcohol itself.  The man or woman who in times past knew nothing but promiscuity now finds themselves unequivocally in love and sole fidelity and devotion to their God as well as their spouse has a powerful testimony to all around them.  None need ever know the heights of their former indiscretions, but it is the renewed strength of their marriage that will inspire interest in the eyes of others.  The former pathological liar, who now finds themselves only speaking the truth couched in love, will have such a voice as the world has yet to hear.  The person who formerly was unable to control their dietary habits and now is dropping weight and becoming healthier has a diet plan of divine origin that no other fad or book could ever supplant. 

Talking about these kinds of victories in the abstract, or in the lives of those you know, is different than speaking from a passion that comes because they happened to you.  When they happen to you, your testimony becomes one of what Christ has done for YOU.  It will never be your victory.  It will always be His, done on your behalf.  Your testimony can never be about what you have conquered for you have conquered nothing, but Christ has conquered everything you needed done.  That is the message of hope you can give to others still trapped in weakness you have been freed from.  Not how you did it, for you will have no idea “how” you did it – but instead “who” did it for you.  In this case isolationism is not required for recovery.  All that is required is the genuine daily work of surrender and submission to the will of Christ.  As we allow Him greater and greater control within us we begin to lose the ideas of self, and self-reliance.  We begin to give Him the credit for the work He is doing.  We begin to develop a testimony that actually has meaning and will carry weight.  Without the cure, we have nothing much to say.  A witness of the changes in others is simply not a compelling enough reason for someone else to seek change.  But a personal testimony combined with a life that is evident of change is a hard combination to ignore.  Our witness must be lived to be effective.

The work of saving others is not something that requires a push; instead it requires a reason to find it.  Do you seek marital advice from a couple who fights more than you do, and is now seeking a divorce?  The only thing they may have to offer is what not to do.  We do not seek counsel from those we perceive to be worse off than ourselves on the topic we need help with, simply because we believe them to wise people.  If they were indeed wise, why do they not simply practice what they preach?  But when our marriage is hurting and we see a couple who has been married for many years and has a passion that can hardly be contained, a disposition of charity and giving that hardly has a rival, and a unity that only the Holy Spirit could bring between two people – those are the folks we are going to reach out to.  It does not matter if the couple who surrender to God every day thinks of themselves as formal “counselors”.  Indeed they are probably not.  For it is not the wisdom of men that enables the marriage of pure unity and love, it is Christ alone.  But it is that very message, that is just the thing our aching marriage needs to hear.  We seek it because we see the difference in their lives more so than what we find in our own.  It is how they live that inspires us to seek them out.  It is not what they say, but what we see, that makes the difference in who we seek counsel from.  This is the nature of the gospel and re-creation, and the reason the world will one day hear it so Christ can return.

Words alone will never rule the day.  Words must echo action and be substantiated within them.  When they are in harmony with each other, when the will is fully surrendered to Christ, the actions that follow are as automatic as breathing.  Our marriage does not magically improve because we wish it would, instead it improves because “how” we love our spouse is directed and altered and increased by the indwelling of Christ in us.  Even if our spouse does not share our commitment yet, they will surely notice the changes in how we love them.  Love is hard to ignore, harder still to resist.  The way we live begins to reflect the way He loves.  And it is these acts of loving others that begins to redefine us as His true servants.  No other explanation can account for the total transformation of the human heart from weakness to self-less-ness.   Instead of having our minds consumed with thoughts of fleeing our former sins, they become engaged in reaching out to those we love.  Where we have to go becomes irrelevant.  For we do not wander into bars to drink, but only as we are directed by the will of Christ to find that one lost soul who is in need.  It is not that we idly hang out in places of former weakness, nor are we there to participate in what we now find entirely abhorrent, but there is nothing and no place we would not dare to go, if a lost soul can be reached.  The lost souls will not have reason to seek counsel from those who participate with them in their weakness.  But they will have little resolve against a life they knew to be as bad as their own, that is now full of evidence of the freedom that only Christ can offer.

Christ was not found in only the palaces of the rich.  In fact He was rarely if ever found there.  Instead He was found on “the wrong side of the tracks”, in the bad neighborhoods, where the harlots, the sluts, the cheaters, the thieves, the murderers, in short where the lost were found.  Christ was not there to partake in their weakness.  He was there to offer them freedom from it.  The lost and aching souls of today will rarely be found in the pews next to you.  They do not attend church regularly.  Instead you will find them at work, at play, at places of disrepute, engaged in things you may have once thought of as “fun” and now you find only as painful.  It is there where you will encounter them, in areas of life probably not conducive to church.  It is there where they will “see” you.  They will take note of who you are and of “how” you love.  Will you genuinely care for them, or merely utter inane greetings with no care of the response?  Will you be inclined to participate in their weakness or seem to show no interest in pain, and a great relief from being freed from it?  Who you are will be evident not only in a church pew, but at work, and at play, and perhaps even in an environment that is not the best.  Why you are where you are matters to those in darkness.  To sit in a pew once a week to simply try to demonstrate your holiness offers no compelling reason for anyone else to change.  But to be there because your joy is unbridled, your testimony must find voice, to serve the needs of those who sit beside you – these are the hallmarks of an altered life, an altered heart, and a change that cannot be denied.

Where we recover will never be a perfect place, until Christ returns and remakes the world anew.  But the work of perfection in us can begin here and now, continue if the darkest of times, and find its fulfillment even before He returns, so that on that great day we are able to say … “this is He, the Lamb, who we have waited for”.  The work of perfection does not begin on that day, it reaches completion.  For those who enter the grave before they are able to see His return, they are resurrected in a state of perfection.  But for those who are still alive at His coming, the work of perfecting the character will have already reached its conclusion.  Therefore if persecution, and darkness, a world at war, and plagues that encompass the globe could not deter the Lord from finishing His work in us, why should we think our meager temptations could deter Him from starting it right now?  The freedom Christ came to offer us, was not from oppression and hardship the world is steeped in, it was from the slavery to self each of us is controlled by.  We do not require a sterile environment in which to recover, just a willingness to allow our Lord to make pure the heart within us.  We have only to become what He intends for us to become, for He will surely re-create us completely.

Undergoing the Change ...

If you don’t work at a power plant you probably could not describe in detail how the electricity reaches the light bulb to light up your home.  It just does.  There are occasions when a power outage keeps the lights from turning on, and during these events, you could probably not describe what the utility workers do to fix the problem.  They just do.  There is a process.  Electricity does not reach your home by magic; nor do the utility workers simply wave a wand to fix an error.  But it is not the work that YOU do.  It is the work YOU benefit from.  Your part of the agreement is to provide funds to the utility company for this service.  They do the work, you get the electricity.  Very many things function this way in our modern society.  We have learned to depend on them.  We don’t try to do them all ourselves, it would be impractical, perhaps even impossible.  Instead we learn to rely on others to do certain work for us, and we use the results of their efforts for still other things.  Yet when it comes to spirituality, we fail the same basic test that Lucifer failed so many years ago, to trust God.  God (our spiritual physician), promises He will heal our disease of evil.  He will remove it from us as far as east is from west.  He will bury our evil at the bottom of the sea.  But we refuse to believe He will do what He has promised, and so we attempt to do it for Him, or with Him, or ahead of Him.  We try again and again to take control, put things on our time line, with methods that please us.  It is like trying to build the power plant ourselves, mine the coal, build and operate the reactor, install the wiring and circuitry, and even make the individual light bulbs we need.  Instead we could simply take God up on His promises and start enjoying His light.

To undergo the change God has promised we must begin by realizing there is no control for us.  This process of healing does not occur with us acting as the surgeon, that job is God’s, and He does not need or want our help.  We do not set the timelines for how long this process will take.  We do not identify the tasks that will need to be performed.  In point of fact, we are blind to just how bad our condition is, and were it fully revealed to us in an instant, it would kill us.  Instead our job is to let our Doctor do the work only He can do to cure us.  We let Him.  And frankly we CANNOT understand how He does what He does.  He just does it.  Our cure is not some combination of known techniques, actions, and prescriptions we could reasonably learn to imitate.  He is not trying to teach us how to save others.  Instead He asks us ONLY to refer them to the author of love.  The work He does within us is one ONLY He can do.  For only God can change a heart.  Without Him, the heart merely gets older, more set in its ways, more inclined to degenerate further and further into the disease of self service.  But under His control, the heart can be re-created, reborn into what He intends for it to be.  He cures us individually, not in a group session.  Each human heart is reborn through a process of God’s design custom tailored for each patient, according the needs and abilities of each patient.  The procedure of rebirth is timed on God’s timelines, not our own.  We do not determine how long it will take for us, or how long is should take for us.  Nor do we set the timeline for anyone else.  What God fixes first, is up to God, NOT up to us.  We may think we know where we are suffering the most, or feeling the most pain from, but only our God knows truly what must be fixed and in what order.

Self is a terrible disease.  It shows symptoms in the most unlikely places.  What is being cured within us is all too often beyond our capacity to see, let alone to understand.  All we need to know is that we need a cure, and that God alone can provide it.  When Lucifer in his perfection began to question what would be the results of pursuing love to self rather than serving others, he had no idea where it would lead.  God tried to warn him, tried to counsel him, tried to show him the value of loving others instead of loving self.  But Lucifer would not trust God.  Instead he trusted his own wisdom.  He simply had no knowledge of evil, so he refused to believe that evil was even possible.  It did not exist prior to that time so how would loving self bring it about now?  We face the same exact question.  The work of healing the sin sick heart is something we simply cannot dissect and understand.  If we are to be healed, we must trust that God can and will heal us.  We must trust despite our complete LACK of wisdom on the topic.  In effect we are trusting our lives to God, our futures to God, our hearts to God.  We are putting everything we have into the hands of God.  But we also have the benefit of scripture, history, and the testimony of those He has healed before – He has never failed.  And His entire desire, His entire wish, His entire yearning is for nothing more than to cure YOU – to fix YOU – to bring YOU home again.

To undergo the change is to let go.  To start to heal is to quit entirely looking at the faults of others.  Our hospital was not meant for one poor patient only, but for the entire world.  All are hurting and in need of the cure.  What the patient in the next bed is doing has nothing to do with you.  What our doctor God does for him/her is between God and them.  The symptoms of the disease of self that you can so easily see in the lives of others are not a license for you to start practicing medicine.  They are a cry for help to our Lord, the only doctor who can heal them.  We all hurt.  We all ache.  We are afflicted with the disease of self.  Each may show different signs of our affliction, and may be relieved of them at different times – but only through the work of our God.  We are free to talk about the wonderful work our God does for us, but we are not free to pretend that we are the doctor.  To criticize another sick person for being sick, is the height of hypocrisy.  Instead we should take tremendous joy in the fact that we are in the process of undergoing the change, and praise God for EVERY single other sin-sick soul who shares the same road – no matter where they happen to be on it at the time.  To obsess of the sins of another, or even the sins of our own, is to take our eyes off the cure and keep them squarely on the disease.  Nothing is gained by this.  Instead we must let go.  We must change the focus of our eyes away from the disease that would drag us down, and place it on Christ who is here to remove it from us.  We must let go and trust.

The work of removing the desire for evil from our hearts is a work of great mystery.  Like the light bulb that turns on when I flip the switch, I cannot begin to fully explain it.  This is because I am NOT the one doing the work.  God is.  Sometimes in an instant, sometimes over a period of time, I find that something I once treasured in indulging myself in no longer has any appeal.  I simply do not want it anymore.  It is impossible for me to explain why I am no longer addicted to the very thing I craved just yesterday, but it is so.  And with such a radical change, comes a radical change in thinking.  All the time spent in obsession, all the effort spent in pursuit, is now gone.  It frees me.  I have tons of time I did not even realize were spent obsessing about my former desire.  Without the chains to bind me to evil, I am free to see something more than evil.  I am free to see how the power of love has changed me.  For it is because He loves me that He changes me.  It is love alone that motivates my God, and perhaps love alone that empowers Him.  It is impossible for me to describe to you, “how” this works, because it is not my work.  It does not come because I work for it.  It does not come because I deserve it.  It does not come because I wish it would.  It comes because I allow it to occur.  It comes because I am willing to let the Doctor change me, no matter what that may mean.  It comes because I ask Jesus to do the work He has promised to do, inside of me, wherever that may lead.  Then He does.  He really does.  Not just words on a page, or chapters in a Bible, but here and now, inside me, inside my heart, inside my mind.  I experience a freedom that I cannot describe adequately in language or printed page.  There is an exuberance that comes when the chains of evil are finally broken by the only One who could.  You will not understand what I am talking about, until you allow it to happen to you.  Then you will not be able to imagine how you could have lived any other way.

The transformation Christ offers and performs is life altering.  We’re not just talking about a mild reduction in the propensity to sin.  We are talking about the complete revocation of some deep-seated core-level personality encompassing addiction you though you could never be rid of.  It can change the core of who you are.  It can change the core of how you think, what you want, what you need.  It alters your perception, your vision, and how you see truth.  Scripture opens and has entirely new found truths present that in times past you never understood.  You begin to see the love of God in every truth, and realize there is no truth absent love, as there is no truth absent Christ.  For Christ is truth, life, and love.  There is no other.  The reason God declares Himself the only true God, is because He is the only true God.  It is no myth, no superstition, no contrived story by power hungry men of ancient days.  Instead it is a living abiding truth that carries the power to change your life in the here and now.  No need to wait for heaven as the Kingdom of God is come.  It is here.  It was here in the flesh of Christ and has remained here by the power of His Spirit since His ascension.  Our God is still among us, if only in Spirit instead of in flesh.  He is still able to inhabit the willing heart and remake it into His image.  He is still able to restore our brokenness and remove our disease, and longs to do it right now.  The effect of the cure changes everything.  Nothing you will ever read, see, or experience will be same again.  The effect of witnessing Christ save you from yourself, from the evil you have been slave to, is the fundamental basis of the entirety of the gospel.  Nothing else ever written can compare to the work done inside of you.  For to you, this is heaven, this is salvation, this is the reconciliation of you to your God.  What else could possibly compare with it?

A single change opens the eyes to what else is possible, and what else is needed.  As we are too often blinded to our disease, we fail to recognize how severe our current condition is.  We think if we can just let Christ give us the victory over some cherished sin, that we will be “pure” once it is gone.  Wishful thinking.  The removal of any sin is life altering, but with the removal of evil in one form or another, often comes a better ability to see deeper problems we were not even aware existed there.  The man who is given the victory over an adulterous affair and praises God for it now finds the deeper problem he faces was objectifying women and spending a lifetime of only pursuing them like so many other possessions to toy with.  Upon being released from what he thought would be his most pressing sin, he finds the entire way he has viewed women must now be re-created and rethought.  As he begins to be given the gift of seeing a woman not as a thing but as a precious soul who our God loves, he begins to realize the lust that drove him to pursue his former “objects” was merely another form of self-gratification that must now find its end upon the surgical table of our Doctor God.  As the lust that enslaved him and drove him into the affairs which wrecked his relationships is now removed, he begins to see what it truly means to love another ahead of himself.  Pleasing others begins to become more important to him than he ever imagined it would.  Learning how to truly love someone else begins to show fruit in his relationships.  His parents, his children, his siblings, his spouse all begin to benefit from the changes God is working in his life.  His marriage becomes something he never dreamed it could, nor could his spouse.  What is NOT possible for man, is child’s play for our God.  We have only to allow Him to do it in us.  When once a change is made, an entire chain of events begins.  It does not matter what kind of symptoms we were showing, all evil is traced back to some form of self-service, self-indulgence, self-gratification.  When evil begins to vacate our lives by the power of God, we see where it had deeper roots and what must be done next by God to see it fully gone from us.

Too many Christians have looked forward with longing to the twinkling of an eye at the last trump of God to see the sin within them removed finally and fully forever.  Those who now sleep in the Lord will awake to such a full transformation.  But those who are alive today, need not live in pain until that great day.  Instead we are free to seek a cure in the here and now.  For how can we truly be saved, if we are unwilling to allow ourselves to be saved?  The beauty of heaven, and absence of disease, and end to death, is NOT our ultimate reward – they are trinkets.  The real gift our God is offering us is an existence without evil, a life not bound in chains to serving self.  That is salvation.  That is our true reward and His greatest gift to us.  And that is not something we have to wait to receive.  We can begin today.  It is not the threats of eternal death, or burning in hell that causes the soul to change.  Threats bare no fruit but to scare.  Love however changes the soul, and gives one the relief of a life spent in the “hell” of a selfish existence.  Those bound in a terminally degenerative condition will ultimately seek the release of death on their own.  No one wants to live in a state of torture forever.  And this is all an existence of evil has to offer, ever increasing levels of pain, until death alone is thought of as a better choice.  That is the punishment, the cause and effect, that Christ is offering to free us from now.  Why would we ever even consider delaying that cure, putting off that effort?  It makes no sense to choose to live in bondage to pain for just a while longer before we finally and grudgingly accept happiness and joy in its place.  The idea of waiting for heaven to seek a cure is one the devil avidly markets to Christians today.  It is only another warped, misguided way of thinking, that blinds one to pain they inflict on themselves so as not to seek a cure that could be implemented immediately.

But while the healing can begin immediately the process takes longer than an instant.  Not all evil is removed from us in one felled swoop until Christ does return.  Instead, as we begin to trust Him and allow Him to remake us, He carefully and gently begins the work of removing one sin, and one desire for evil at a time.  This process is by design.  When it begins we do not fully know how much work He has yet to do.  It takes time to remove every instance of self-focus from our lives.  It also takes trust that builds with Him more and more as we begin to allow Him to do this work within us more and more.  If it were over in an instant, we would not appreciate what it means to learn to trust Him.  To learn by experience what it means to let go, and let Him save us from ourselves – this is the process of redemption and it is not one that can be rushed to fit our own ideas of need.  As it progresses we find ourselves yearning more and more for an end to the evil we see in ourselves.  Where once we thought to prolong our days to “enjoy” our evil, we now begin to pray in earnest to remove the evil from within us right here and right now.  Daily we begin to follow the example of our Lord who sought first to seek His Father’s will and not His own.  If our perfect Savior submitted Himself daily to the will of His Father, how much more do we need to do the same?  Our lives are built one day at a time, so must be the process of our healing.  We must daily entreat the Lord to do His work within us, and then release any thoughts of control over to Him to allow Him to do what must be done.  As this work begins to show fruit, He gives us victories over sins and desires we could never hope to have undone.  This gives us hope and knowledge that even more can be done.  And so the seeds He sows within us to trust Him take root and the work He does grows and over time takes over our entire being.

The change itself is a paradox.  While becoming ever more evident in how we think and what we want, our actions just seem to fall in line with our new found ideology and motives.  We cannot explain why.  While we cannot measure our success we cannot seem to avoid it either.  Obedience to the commands of God is not possible without the transformation of rebirth in Christ.  What does it mean to truly “keep” the Sabbath, or to truly “honor” our parents?  No list would ever be complete enough.  No amount of don’ts could ever fully encompass it.  But when a heart is recreated in the love only Christ can make, honoring and loving our fellow man becomes a natural part of how we think, and of what we want to do.  We long to have time to spend with our God, in worship and gratitude, but also in actions of love intended for those He longs to reach.  “Keeping” the Sabbath becomes way more than a mere ritual or set of traditional actions set to predefined schedules – it becomes a living embodiment of worship that loves the un-loveable more than words could possibly express.  Our parents become a treasure to us whose value we finally begin to realize.  Our children become more prized to us than we thought possible before.  And those we used to condemn for carrying the signs of sin just a bit different from our own, are now valued, loved, and needed at our sides in order that we dare not lose them to the pain of an existence away from the source of love.  Love alone rules the thoughts, the motives, the intents and therefore the deeds.  Love, not of human origin that is frail, fickle, and easy removed – but love that comes from God reflected through us where the source is Him.  A love that never tires, fades, or loses interest, but instead grows and breeds more passion that will never let us go.  We believe ourselves filled beyond what we thought possible, only to find it grows again tomorrow.  We wish to measure our progress only to find we are farther along, but still have far to go.  We find ourselves full of love, but see we still need more love for others.  The change itself is a paradox, yet it is.

It is impossible to find truth without recreation.  To read scripture to prove a doctrine is the wrong use of our Bible’s.  It comes with presupposed ideas and beliefs and attempts only to validate what we already think or have been taught rather than to find the truth He would lead us to.  To espouse doctrine without understanding the love that by definition must have inspired it, is to espouse mere ideology of a Biblical theme.  Doctrine is meaningless absent love, and cannot be taught properly until the love of the God who stands behind it is clearly seen.  Truth is found in Christ, not in the teachings of men.  Life is found in Christ, not the pursuits of happiness we so vainly attempt to supplement Him with.  Love is born of God and reflected through us, not created from a source inside us.  Revelations of this kind are revealed to the surrendered heart, and the surrendered will.  They are not new ideas.  They have been taught from the writings of Moses, to John, to the sermons in local pulpits of the day.  But absent the reformation of Christ in the heart, they are merely more words.  Nice ideas are not the goal of the gospel.  Great ideals are not the goal of scripture.  Actual life altering change is the core of the message of the gospel; change that IS possible, not through work or words that we read, but through a surrender to Christ.  The values of Christ are not just aspirations preached to us on the weekends, they can be an intrinsic part of who we are.  All we need is the cure.  All we need is a daily surrender to Christ, and truth will open to us in His time, using His methods.  It is an individual thing, but it is meant for every single individual who has ever walked this earth or will walk it until the day of His return.  No one is beyond the redemption He offers.  No one is so far gone that our Lord cannot remake them over again.  No act is so heinous as to cause the Lord to forsake His work in us, save that we constantly refuse His offer.  A life spent saying no to God is a wasted and sad painful life.  A life spent trying to heal oneself from the disease of sin, is a wasted sad and painful life.  But a life given over to God in a humble submission to His will and not our own, is a life that will change the world.  It will begin with you, as you daily allow the Lord to cure you of the disease of self.  So let it begin right now.