The Tug of War: Time, Stress & Priorities VS. God, Eternity & Joy

Recently someone noted that he felt overwhelmed with the stresses of life (yes, I think you overheard this, too - but probably not from the same person). That got me thinking about our life in this world and the next. Inevitably, we get bogged down with the incessant demands of activities, relationships, work projects, hobbies, events, schedules, home life, church life, maintenance, technology, and so many other things. All of this can rise to a toxic level as we find ourselves out of  focus, out of sorts, and seemingly out of options. This appears to be a universal experience, especially for those of us who live in the Western world.

In such a state, we find it almost impossible to get our scattered minds settled on the Gospel. Prayer and contemplation become luxuries we feel we can ill afford. Bible study turns into a quick glance at a Psalm - or perhaps nothing at all. We begin to count on the preacher's sermon to get us through the week, and we rely on a few restless moments of sleep to carry us through the steadily advancing days. But those hours are gone too quickly and each day's new mercies get buried under the clutter of our busy-ness.

Yet for each of us there comes a time of true rest, eventually. That rest will be chosen by us through a painful decision to cut off things we enjoy but don't need, or it will be forced upon us by circumstances and ill health and mental strain and the unexpected breakdown which finally forces us to pause. We might be angry when this happens. But at the end of it all is God, calling us to Himself in a voice that is at once quieter and more persistent than all of the earthly demands. His sheep know His voice, and we follow Him. If not, He binds our legs together and slings us over his shoulders and carries us. We seem to be out of commission, but we're actually in a wonderful place of trust-building dependence. These are hard lessons to learn, but necessary to our growth under the difficult reality of being time-bound and priority-driven. It will be wondrously freeing to enter eternity, and be swept up in an intent God-focus that cannot be turned even slightly by the raging distraction of less worthy things.

Till then, this is a wretched and uncomfortable life, filled with sorrow, trouble . . . and flashes of imperishable delight whenever He shows His hand or reveals His smile. Mercy and grace are drawing us up to our eternal rest, even as this world wraps its tentacles more tightly around our feet. We may feel pulled in two different directions, but let us lift our heads and smile up toward the One Who holds our hands more tightly and tenaciously than this world's distractions ever could. He won this tug of war before we knew it.

My Goodness, What a Paradox! Part 3

In parts 1 and 2, we have looked at and partially explained the paradox presented by Biblical affirmations that certain people are good, in light of Jesus' thrice-repeated statement that only God is good. We have explained this by relegating man's goodness to a secondary and dependent reflection of God's own goodness. God alone is the source and fountain of any and all goodness that exists.

But how does God's goodness get into us? How can we receive and reflect His goodness? How can we become partakers of it to the extent that we can be called "good"? And how can we practice Biblical balance on this issue? Let's look at the Scriptural examples of good people for some clues...

GOOD PERSON #1 - Joseph of Arimathea

Luke 23:50-52 And a man named Joseph, who was a member of the Council, a good and righteous man (he had not consented to their plan and action), a man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who was waiting for the kingdom of God; this man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

GOOD PERSON #2 - Barnabas

Acts 11:22-24 The news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch. Then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord; for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And considerable numbers were brought to the Lord.

In both cases, there were inward and outward evidences of faith. Joseph's inward evidence was that he was “waiting for the Kingdom of God.” The outward evidences were that he “had not consented to” the council's decision to kill Jesus, and he offered Jesus a decent burial in his own tomb. Barnabas was inwardly “full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,” and he outwardly evidenced joy, encouragement, recognition of grace, and evangelistic zeal. Both of these “good” men had clear testimonies of faith according to the Scriptures. They became good by grace through faith, and not by works or merit.

FAITH, HUNGER, FULLNESS

In part 2, we discussed man's dependence on God. Taking it a bit further, dependence can be divided into two related concepts. There is the objective fact of dependence, which is NEED. And there is the subjective response to dependence, which is FAITH. After all, what is faith but a voluntary dependence on God, and a willingness to receive what He gives us? Our need for God is a fact; faith is an acknowledgment and response to that fact, in light of the full sufficiency of God, Himself, in His character, acts and ways.

Sin is the opposite of faith. It is a refusal to gratefully receive the good that God gives, and it is a rejection of that good. Sin leaves us blind to God's goodness. It is an attempt to find good within ourselves apart from Him. “And whatever is not from faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23)

When God grants repentance, our hearts begin to see the futility and emptiness of sin. We begin to loathe sin and HUNGER for God's goodness. Hunger is a KNOWLEDGE OF EMPTINESS and a NEEDY DESIRE to be filled. As we desire God's goodness, seek His goodness, and receive His goodness by faith we become filled with His goodness. “He has filled the hungry with good things.” (Luke 1:53) ... “For He has satisfied the thirsty soul, and the hungry soul He has filled with what is good.” (Psalm 107:9) ... “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Psalm 34:8). Through faith, God's goodness fills us. Notice that the good man Barnabas was “full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” From the very beginning, it has been God's intention to fill human beings with nothing less than Himself. He does not fill us because we are good, He fills us to make us good.

THE INDWELLING SPIRIT

Notice these two very similar verses:

Matthew 7:11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

Luke 11:13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

NOTE: Jesus makes a sweeping generalization about all of His listeners: "You are evil." The message is directed to His followers, among others, and yet He makes no distinction whatsoever. All are evil. By nature, we are depraved, and if we follow the sinless Son of God we will have to face ourselves. Some would see this as terrible news. But Christ so embodies the remedy for our sin that believers can receive these words with surprising joy and gratitude. These words are TRUTH, and they have the power to show us our need for Christ. They awaken us from our false sense of personal and inherent goodness and move us to seek good outside of our natural selves. All people are well served by Christ's enlightening phrase, "You are evil."

In these verses, “What is good” is parallel to “the Holy Spirit.” That is, the Spirit Who indwells and fills believers, for “we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (I Cor. 12:13)

We are characterized by that which fills us, as the book of Romans illustrates in three places:

Romans 15:13-14 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to admonish one another.

This passage refers to believers, and says they are full of goodness (Greek AGATHOSUNE, the noun related to AGATHOS).

Romans 1:28-29 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness ...

This passage refers to fallen humanity, and says they are filled with all unrighteousness.

Romans 7:18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh ...

This verse is found in the middle of Paul's testimony of struggle with sin. Paul is aware that indwelling sin is not good, and he says so, but notice that he immediately qualifies the statement by saying, “that is, in my flesh.” Sin dwells in his flesh, but Christ dwells in his spirit, so he is not utterly devoid of good. In one sense he is filled with sin, but in another sense he is filled with God! Is it any wonder there's a struggle going on inside him? And do we think we are any different?

Because we cannot be perfectly and purely filled with God in this present life, believers are never perfectly and purely good – at least not yet. Presently, there is always a mixture in us. We are saints who are sinners, redeemed people who are partly filled with God and partly filled with sin. However, by faith we partake of God's goodness and share His virtue. To the extent that we are filled with what is good, we are good.

KEEPING FOCUS

Seeing that God's goodness is primary, and ours is secondary, we must make a deliberate choice regarding emphasis. What Scripture emphasizes as primary, we should also emphasize as primary. It is not wrong to call a believer with a solid testimony a “good person”, but it is improper to emphasize human goodness more than divine goodness. It is also dangerous to ignore the balancing truth that believers are still sinners, and could only be full of evil apart from God's intervening grace.

We must heavily contrast God's goodness and man's depravity. When speaking of believers, we must consider their faith-based goodness in Christ and also the residue of depravity that remains in them. There is no Scriptural account where any believer calls himself a good person, but there are plenty of occasions where believers humbly refer to themselves as sinful or unworthy. This is especially true when they have encountered a revelation of God. So, in practice, the insistent rant of “Christian” psychologists who advise us to tell ourselves we are good people is directly contrary to Scripture, not because there is no goodness in us but because this is NEVER the focus of New Testament teaching.

Overall, there is much more Scriptural emphasis on believers “doing good” than “being good”. Some of today's liberal Christians have famously said we should focus less on being “right” and more on being “good”. This is a category mistake, similar to saying a work of art should be less painted and more picturesque. One depends on the other, and both are at the discretion of the artist. Not that we have to be right about every detail of doctrine, but we need to know and believe the essentials of the faith. Let's have no more of this nonsense about trying to be good. The real need is to magnify the goodness of God, and conform ourselves to it in thought and deed. Doctrine versus practice is a false dichotomy. God expects us to be fully devoted to BOTH, as Paul commanded in I Timothy 4:11-16, “Prescribe and teach these things ... show yourself an example of those who believe ... give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching ... do not neglect the spiritual gift within you ... take pains with these things, be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things...” Do you see the way Paul flips back and forth between doctrine and practice in this passage? Biblical practice flows out of Biblical doctrine, proves Biblical doctrine, demonstrates Biblical doctrine - but it never replaces doctrine. It never makes doctrine irrelevant. And practice that is not firmly grounded in doctrine creates a void that is likely to be filled by error. Faith is demonstrated by deeds, but it comes from hearing the Word.

When speaking of unbelievers, we should bear in mind that they are fallen, depraved, sinful, and devoid of goodness – but also that this depravity is not absolute or irreversible. It is only because sin separates the unrepentant from God's goodness that unbelievers are “not good”. It is only by being filled with God's goodness that believers are in any sense good. Keeping this balance will help us to view ourselves and others properly and Biblically. It reminds us that in some senses we are no different than unbelievers, and the real difference is a result of God's working, not our own merit.

In part 4, we'll examine a few more pertinent Scriptures on the topic of divine and human goodness. May God's Word and Spirit guide us.

My Goodness, What a Paradox! Part 2

We're looking at the paradox presented by some Biblical statements concerning the goodness of God and man. On one hand, we have statements from Jesus declaring that only God is good. On the other hand, we have Luke describing two different people as “good.” Let's look at four common responses to paradox as they relate to this issue:

FOUR RESPONSES

The Skeptical or Agnostic response: “There! That proves it! The Bible contains contradictions and cannot be trusted. Throw it away.”

The Imbalanced response: "Jesus said only God is good. His testimony is greater than Luke's, so we can ignore Luke's mistaken perceptions." One finds this type of imbalance in those who would pit the words of Christ against Paul, or the New Testament against the Old Testament. Such an approach assumes the Scriptures to be unreliable. Alternately, an imbalanced approach might say, "Of course people are good. We're all God's children and there's nothing wrong with any of us. Isn't that what the Bible says?"

The Rationalistic response: "There is a very simple explanation. A word can have more than one meaning. When referring to a human being, goodness means one thing. When referring to God, it means another. There's not the slightest bit of contradiction or paradox in this!"

The Faith/Paradox response: “There is an underlying principle here. The Holy Spirit allowed this apparent contradiction to get our attention and point us to something deeper. God wants us to meditate on this, search the Scriptures and discover His wisdom in the matter. Since God does not lie or contradict Himself, and since He is not reckless with His words, there must be an explanation that is reasonable but not overly simplistic. And one that will affect our hearts by revealing God's glory.”

NOTE: In this case, the rationalistic response does have some validity. There are instances where semantic variations in a word's meaning create a false contradiction. However, in this case I believe that explanation falls short. The danger is, in our pride of "knowing the answer" we often jump to conclusions and settle for an easy explanation. In this way, we sometimes miss things that can only be found by searching further in the Scriptures.

Let's start by affirming both sides of the paradox without equivocation. God alone is good. Some people are also good. This the undeniable testimony of Scripture. So how do we handle it?

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY GOODNESS

Ultimately, I believe this paradox points to our dependence on God, and to two categories of goodness: primary (or source) goodness, and secondary (or reflective) goodness. These categories describe separate manifestations of the same goodness. In other words, there is ONE goodness – God's - and sometimes it exists in people. Whatever goodness a person may have is actually God's goodness in him. Jonathan Edwards describes the way in which all of man's good - and by implication, man's goodness - depends on God:

“The several ways wherein the dependence of the one being may be upon another for its good, and wherein the redeemed of Jesus Christ depend on God for all their good, are these, viz. That they have all their good of him, and that they have all through him, and that they have all in him: That he is the cause and original whence all their good comes, therein it is of him; and that he is the medium by which it is obtained and conveyed, therein they have it through him; and that he is the good itself given and conveyed, therein it is in him.” (God Glorified In Man's Dependence, Jonathan Edwards – Representative Selections, edited by Clarence H. Faust and Thomas H. Johnson, New York: Hill and Wang, 1962)

Man's goodness is reflective, secondary, and dependent - not primary. Our goodness relates to God's goodness in the same way that moonlight relates to sunlight. To the extent that the moon receives and reflects the sun's light, it too is a light. But the moon bears no light on its own. Apart from the sun, it would be completely dark. At its best, the moon is fifty percent darkness. “God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night...” (Genesis 1:16)

In the same way, man's goodness is nothing more than a reflection of God's goodness. You and I, at our very best, are “lesser” lights. When sin gets between us and God, it effectively eclipses His light and leaves us devoid of good. That is depravity. But when we come into the light of God's goodness, we receive and reflect His goodness.

MAN'S ORIGINAL GOODNESS AND THE FALL

When God created the heavens and the earth, and all that they contain, he noted several times that what He created “was good.” (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). At the end of the 6^th day, the day on which man was created, He said it was “very good.” This has been construed by some to mean that man has a special goodness not shared by the rest of creation. But let's look at Genesis 1:31 and see what it says: “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” This is not singling out mankind as the best of the best, for the “very good” encompasses all that God created. Nevertheless, man was a unique creation with a special status. Adam and Eve were certainly created “good” and were part of what was “very good”. But the reason for man's special status is found in Genesis 1:26, where God says, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Man is good only to the extent that he bears the image of God.

“Image” is a reflective term. An image is merely a representation of something else. I have a picture of my wife, which I cherish, but I am not married to that picture. The picture is beautiful only because it conveys the image of a beautiful person. The paper on which it is printed is common stock – worth nothing at all compared to my wife. Likewise, we are not the source of God's image, only bearers of it. The fall removed that image from us, but in the lives of Christians it is being restored because Christ is in us and shines through us.

God is good with a goodness that is measureless and incomparable. He is infinitely, intrinsically, and inherently good. Believers begin to be good the moment they are united to Christ. We display His goodness as we show His characteristics through our attitudes, words and deeds. Our goodness is real, but it is never independent. God's goodness can exist apart from ours, but ours cannot exist without His. In this way, God alone is good, but believers are also good in Him.

In part 3, we'll delve deeper and look at some specific ways in which man reflects the goodness of God. Then in part 4, we'll wrap it up with a consideration of some key Scripture passages. Now that we've started exploring the paradox in detail, feel free to comment, agree/disagree, offer your own explanation, etc.