Can a Christian Smoke Marijuana? Maybe.

Within my lifetime there has been a significant shift in the cultural perspective on marijuana usage. Just today, as I sat in Starbucks sipping my decaf coffee (I didn't want to abuse the drug caffeine), I was simultaneously reading a forum discussion between Pastor's on the subject of whether or not Christians should smoke weed and eavesdropping on a conversation between people next to me who were discussing their perspectives. Both parties at the table next to me discussed the rampant drug use in the high school that they were familiar with; one of them said, "Marijuana has replaced alcohol as the drug of choice. It's so much safer! It's all natural, too." The other (apparently after the other person had left, because I wasn't watching them and there was no response), gave the traditional perspective: "It's so dangerous...it's a gateway drug."

The shift in cultural perspective means that in some parts of the country, recreational marijuana use is legal, and in all likelihood the rest of the nation will follow this trend. Many Christians have refrained from using marijuana simply because it has been illegal; as that will no longer be the case, they are actually forced to have a perspective on it and think through why a Christian should abstain or not abstain. If you live in one of those areas where it is already legal, there's a good chance the discussion has already come up: should a Christian smoke marijuana?

Let me say up front that I am not talking about medical usage of marijuana. Marijuana is proven to relieve the symptoms of some ailments, and the research has increasingly demonstrated potential value in cases such as epilepsy. A friend-of-a-friend uses it for just this purpose, and claims that it's the only thing that works to keep him from the seizures that he's had since he was born. My assumption is that he's telling the truth, and that if it works, more power to him. But that's a post for a different day. In this case, I'm talking about recreational use specifically.

The first place the Christian looks to see if there is any instruction or guidance on the subject is the Bible. So long as marijuana was illegal, the discussion on whether or not a Christian should partake was really just a question of whether or not a Christian was obligated to follow the laws of the land. Since the Bible makes clear that they should, the Christian response to marijunana was similarly black and white. If it is legalized, then that argument becomes moot. And since marijuana usage is not specifically addressed in the Scripture, we have to turn to related issues to determine whether or not it's use is acceptable. Those two related issues are the Bible's teaching on alcohol usage, and the teaching on sobriety generally.

Alcohol & Sobriety 

Although there are differing perspectives within the Christian community on whether or not a Christian should ever drink alcohol, it is an issue that should fit solidly into the "conviction" category of beliefs. A conviction is a belief that a Christian has that is addressed by Scripture, but not in a way that makes the conclusion obvious. As a result, our convictions–although informed by Scripture–are often heavily influenced by our personal experience, and thus we can come to different conclusions and still remain friends without attempting to dismantling the other person's faith. 

The Bible does address alcohol usage, but does so in a way that leaves open the option for Christians to drink. Those in favor of having the occasional drink point out that Jesus first miracle was turning water into wine; those opposed to drinking alcohol point out that the main point of the miracle had to do with purification, not wine drinking, and in any case because Jesus allows something doesn't mean he condones it. In his letters, Paul would encourage the early Christians to "remain sober-minded"; this is the teaching that seems to be behind Paul's exhortation not to get "drunk like the pagans, which leads to debauchery". If there is a clearly-expressed biblical principle related to alcohol, this is it. The Christian should maintain his wits about him; he or she shouldn't voluntarily submit their mental focus to anything that would negatively impact their sobriety.

The reason for this, I think, has less to do with the results of being under the influence, and more to do with the opportunity cost of the loss of sobriety. The results are certainly important, as Paul points out: getting wasted often leads us to make very unwise choices, sometimes to the point that we don't remember we made them. Those effects are temporal, however. They are for this life only. The greater tragedy is the opportunity cost of the loss of sobriety; that is, when we are not sober-minded, we will be ill-equipped to share the Gospel if an opportunity arises. This gets to the heart of Peter's exhortation to the believers in his first letter: always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that you have. There is much that this could mean, but it certainly includes the understanding that the Christian person should be always ready to share the Gospel, and anything that would inhibit our ability to do that should be put aside. Thus, the desirable state of mind for the believer is the one in which he or she is sober and ready to make a defense of the Christian faith.

So then, we are left with these two principles: first, that the usage of alcohol itself is never condemned, and second, that what is condemned is anything that would cause us to lose our wits. If we take the first principle to mean that alcohol usage is allowed, then certainly the guiding principle should be the second: there are limits to God's good creation! The Psalmist remarks that wine gladdens our hearts (Psalm 104), but the wise teacher of the proverbs reminds us that it can also lead us astray; to follow it would be unwise. (Proverbs 20)

These are the two principles that I would apply to the recreational usage of marijuana. Will it cause you to lose your wits? Can you occasionally smoke marijuana and still be in a state of mind to share the Gospel? If so, then I cannot see a biblical reason that it would be disallowed. This is not to say that it would be wise to smoke marijuana. That is a different question and one that I have very little interest in answering at this juncture. Everyone makes unwise choices, and often with regularity. What I'm interested in is what God thinks about it. And as far as I can tell based on what he has chosen to reveal, the best we can do is develop a personal conviction on the issue. We can decide for ourselves based on the Scripture and encourage others to see things how we see them, but we're not allowed to chastise someone for choosing differently than us, if they at least understand what the Bible teaches. If God wanted to be clear, he certainly could have been. But he wasn't. And that means that as we apply what he has told us, we might not all agree. That's what makes it a conviction, rather than an essential.

And at the end of the day, we can still all get along.

Speculating on Jesus: Where to look?

Given that the vast majority of American's already believe that Jesus was a historical figure, the challenge for the Christian person is to define who Jesus was, rather than that he was. The fact that he existed is assumed to be true, but this raises several difficult questions. The first question, "Why should I care?" is covered in this post. We must clarify for ourselves and for those around us why we should have any interest in researching who Jesus actually was; what is it that makes him stand out from all the other historical figures that we could study? This, of course, leads to the second question. If our interest in Jesus is piqued, where should we actually turn to find out more about him? That is the topic of this post.

For now, let's set aside the third question that I presented in the first post on the subject. That question, "how can I trust what I'm reading?", is so important to this second question that I debated whether or not it should come first. Upon reflection, however, I decided that it was better to set it aside for now and simply address what the material related to Jesus life actually says. As we approach Jesus to find out more about him, I think that we will find that our assumptions about him are that he is fairly innocuous; the image that we have is of a kind, caucasian gentleman with a lamb cast around his shoulders. Surely this Jesus cannot be much of a bother; this Jesus won't demand much from us. He is safe. As such, questions of whether or not we should put our confidence in what is actually recorded about Jesus won't really arise until after we've examined the material and found that, far from being innocuous, he is actually quite dangerous; far from demanding little, his claims are actually quite demanding. If not for us, at very least for the way in which we view the world. After coming into contact with who Jesus actually is and what Jesus actually teaches, we find that–if we are to trust him–we cannot go on the same way we have been prior to this moment. Everything changes if what is said about Jesus is true. And that is the point where most of us will be awoken to our senses and we will actually ask the question, "should I trust this material?" And when we ask it, then we will answer it. Until then, we'll just consider where we should look.

The place to begin, of course, is in the four account of Jesus life that are often referred to as "The Gospels". These four accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each take a particular perspective in writing about Jesus, and each of them has a particular audience in mind. They were written by four different authors at four different time periods. Yet despite those differences, we find an amazing cohesiveness between the four books. If we begin with these accounts, there are at least two things that we will begin to see; to data points, if we can call them that, as we discover who Jesus actually is.

First, we'll discover what the very early followers of Jesus though about him. Two of the writers are Jesus disciples (Matthew & John), one of them is a close follower of Jesus who would later spend time with Peter (Mark), and the other is a historian who spent extensive time researching Jesus life and traveling with the Apostle Paul. Certainly, their perspective on who Jesus actually was ought to be important to us. They were the ones who saw him, walked with him, heard him, and ultimately believed in him. These four biographies of Jesus life give us all that we need to make a clear determination of what the early church thought about Jesus: namely, that he was Savior and Lord.

Second, we'll discover what Jesus thought about himself. Jesus was not shy about making radical claims about his identity, and his biographers do not soften these claims. This in itself is worth noting. If the early followers of Jesus knew that he made claims about himself that they did not believe were true, they would have taken great claims to scrub them from the record, as it were. Yet they didn't do that. This indicates that, not only did they believe Jesus, but it also gives us confidence that Jesus believed these claims about himself as well. The most outrageous claim, and the one that finally got him sent to his death (at least from the religious leaders perspective), was that he was God, the creator of the universe. Again, this is an outrageous claim that, were you or I to make it, would make us look like absolute fools. Indeed, Jesus would have looked like a fool too, had he not proved it with his death and resurrection–or at least, that's clearly what his early followers believed about him.

Once we have come into contact with what the early church thought about Jesus, and what Jesus believed about himself, we turn our attention to the next question: what did Jesus believe about the rest of the universe? Or, what did he believe about God? What was his belief about how the world operates, and why it was that he needed to come and offer some sort of salvation? We'll find in short order that what Jesus believed, and the "scripture" that he used, was the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians would refer to as the Old Testament. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus opens to the center of that Scripture and claims that he is ushering in the fulfillment of all that it promises; at the end of his ministry, Jesus takes time to show that everything that was written in the Hebrew Bible pointed towards him. At very least, what we learn from this is that Jesus viewed the Old Testament as trustworthy. They were so trustworthy, in fact, that not only did God deliver them to his people so that they would know what it was that he expected of them, but then, in a great cosmic act of mercy, fulfilled the demands himself. This is the reason why Jesus can say to his followers that the only way to get back into God's good grace, as it were, was through Him. He was the gate into the life you've always wanted, that you've always tried to create. 

Finally, we come to the implications. What does this all mean? For that, we turn to what Christians refer to as the New Testament. A collection of letters and teaching that were written by the very early church leaders and distributed amongst the churches. They, too, were considered authoritative and trustworthy. In the letters we find the early church leaders instructing the people on how the fulfillment of God's law ought to impact our lives, today. One thing that stands out: the expectations of God still matter, it's just that our failure to live up to them isn't held against us. The good news of Jesus is that since he has fulfilled them, our failure to fulfill them will never be held against us again, so long as we put our confidence in his efforts rather than our own. It was unacceptable to the early leaders that you would want to have Jesus, but disagree with him about what he viewed as sin. You couldn't have it both ways. If you acknowledged that Jesus was God, Lord, and Savior, then you also had to agree that what Jesus believed about how God intended the world to be (evidenced through Jesus' scriptures and his own teachings) was actually true. You couldn't claim to follow Jesus, but reject what he taught, even if those teachings led to some discomfort in our lives.

This discovery is what causes most people to stop and question whether or not this source material can be trusted. After all, there are only two ways to make Jesus safer than he actually is. The first is to reinterpret what Jesus said so that it fits our pre-conceived agenda. This is the theological equivalent of having our cake and eating it too; we like the idea of Jesus, but we simply cannot accept what he taught about sin, sexuality, divorce, money, or anything else for that matter. I'll take the free gift of salvation, but functionally I'll reject the reason salvation was necessary in the first place. Surely, things cannot be that bad. The great danger of this softening, or "safening", of Jesus is that it's almost always an inside job. It comes from Christians who know that they cannot totally disparate the text, or the Bible as a whole quickly becomes untrustworthy. Better instead to reinterpret what Jesus said so that it is more palatable for the modern person. The trouble with this approach, however is that it requires us to assume that what was written about Jesus is supposed to be cryptic in nature and it's only we who have discovered the hidden code. Jesus wasn't quite as serious about sin as we make him out to be, see, we have finally discovered it. Of course, if we believe anything about the Bible, we know this is highly unlikely to be true, since it is God's word evealed to us, and a hidden or cryptic meaning would not be much of a revelation at all.

Finding that we cannot simply reinterpret Jesus claims so that they fit with what we wish he would have said, we move on to the second approach to making Jesus safe, and it is simply to question whether or not the text can be trusted at all. And this is the question I alluded to at the beginning of this post. This is when our sensibilities kick in: when we realize that what Jesus is actually calling us to is much more than simply believing he was a moral teacher or an all around good guy. Jesus claimed that he was God, that God required perfection, and that anything less than that resulted in death and eternal separation from God. "Death" is the equivalent of separation from ourselves; our souls are separated from our body. "Hell" is the equivalent of separation from God; our souls are separated from the life-giver. Yet Jesus also claimed that he was the solution to that separation. We could either try to fix the problem ourselves, or we could trust him to fix it on our behalf. Those are the two options that he presents. And if they are true, then it means that he is infinitely more important than perhaps we have previously assumed. But it can't be true, can it? Surely, his biographers must have gotten it wrong. Surely, these texts can't be trusted.

And that will be the next challenge that we will have to answer.

Speculating on Who Jesus Actually Is

Jesus Christ has made a cameo in hundreds of pop culture places, from The Da Vinci Code to South Park. But, although the character of Jesus has certainly been fictionalized, satirized and mythologized over the centuries, the vast majority of Americans still maintain that he was a historical figure. More than nine out of 10 adults say Jesus Christ was a real person who actually lived (92%).

Barna Research Group, April 1, 2015. https://www.barna.org/barna-update/culture/714-what-do-americans-believe-about-jesus-5-popular-beliefs#.VSQ4Bc7maow

That Jesus was a historical figure who actually existed is a difficult fact to deny. My guess is that the reason a very small percentage claimed that he didn't exist is either because of apathy or ignorance; either they don't really care one way or the other, or they simply don't know and have just assumed that he was made up. In any case, Barna's recent survey results reveal that Jesus' existence will probably not need to be argued when you talk to your skeptic friends about Jesus.

That said, Barna's survey also revealed that people have very different ideas about what Jesus was like. Differing opinions on topics ranging from Jesus divinity to whether or not he ever "sinned" (insert your own definition of sin here) mean that even though we mostly agree that Jesus existed, we don't all agree on what he was actually like. This is fertile ground for the Christian to do some thinking: how do we know what Jesus is like? How can I be sure that what I think I know about Jesus can actually be trusted? If Jesus really existed, what type of a person was he?

The first challenge the Christian will face is moving people from the point of acknowledging Jesus existence to actually inquiry of what he was about. This is a bigger challenge than it seems. You might wonder to yourself why in the world someone wouldn't care what Jesus was really like, but insert any other historical figure into the discussion and ask yourself...do you care? How many history books have you read recently? How many historical figures have you inquired about? The truth is that most people in America know approximately the same number of facts about Jesus as they do about Napoleon or Alexander the Great. We know their nationality, a little bit about their story and what they did, and that's it. Not only do we have a very limited knowledge of who they actually are, but most of us feel no pressing need to dig any further. Why should we feel any differently about Jesus?

A second challenge the Christian will face is how we actually go about finding out more about Jesus. The easy answer is "the Bible", and more specifically, the four accounts of Jesus life, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Simple enough on the surface, but it raises a third challenge: how do we know that those accounts can be trusted? After all, we know going in that the Gospel writers were clearly biased. The writers were either one of Jesus twelve disciples themselves (Matthew, John), a close follower of Jesus and probably very close acquaintance of a disciple of Jesus (Mark with Peter), or a very close acquaintance to the famous Apostle Paul (Luke).

These three challenges become the central challenges for the Christian looking to engage the world with what they actually believe, and I think ought to be of primary importance to anyone who claims that Jesus actually exists. First, why should I care about Jesus? Second, where do I find out more about him? Third, how do I know that those accounts can be trusted?

Unless we have an answer to those questions, I think that whatever we believe about Jesus will be little more than speculation.

Loving Others

A notification flashed across my iPhone this morning from a pastor's group I am a part of. The question that had been posed and was now sitting on my screen was how to address a "seeking" couple that was visiting the church but had questions about a particularly difficult cultural situation. In this case, the situation was "homosexuality", but it could have been anything. The pastor wanted to know what he should say and how he should address it.

A few thoughts went through my head as I considered what I would say to him if I responded. The first was, "what do you actually believe about the subject?" My guess is that my pastor friend already knew what he believed, or at least thought he knew what he believed, but when the question is actually posed by a real actual human rather than as a theoretical concept, stuff gets real.

I want to interject and interrupt myself for a moment, because I want to say that I did not read any further than the question, and I did not get an explanation or backstory or any details about what this particular pastor knew or didn't know or thought or didn't think. That said, there was something about the wording that made me think that this person perhaps hadn't through through what he actually believed when the rubber actually met the road; when his theology met his humanity. The word that struck me was the description of the inquisitors as "seekers".

I knew what he meant. "Seeker" is church lingo for someone who is seeking God in some fashion. They are typically "spiritual" but not "religious". They may have been raised in the church, see value in Christianity, but aren't entirely sure how to mesh what they think they believe with what they think the church believes. Often times a seeker has a particular question in mind; something that is their litmus test. For one man who visited our church, his question was predestination. He wanted to believe in God, but couldn't believe in a God who predestined people to Hell. He asked me what I thought on the way out of church, and I had to answer an incredibly complex question in just a couple of minutes with very little understanding of what was behind the question or where he was coming from. When you are talking to a "seeker", the tendency is to frame your response in a way that softens or mutes the difficult edges of your answer. We convince ourselves that the person isn't ready to hear the truth, or that the truth might offend them, and we wouldn't want that! We don't want to be the person who shoves them from "seeker" status back into "lost" territory. We better make sure that our answer is true, but not so true that it is offensive.

Oftentimes our responses in those scenarios end up being so ambiguous that they leave the person on the other end feeling like they got an answer, but not being totally sure what it was. I was watching an episode of Parks & Recreation the other day where the always-positive Chris played by Rob Lowe had recently broken up with Anne, one of the main characters. The problem was that the break-up was spun in such a positive way that Anne didn't realize that he had dumped her. I wonder how often my answers to these difficult questions so ambiguous or spun so positively that the person on the other end walks away thinking that I may have said something entirely different than what I intended.

What my pastor friend was really asking was, "How do I tell these people what God really believes about homosexuality without offending them and turning them away?" I think that's a legitimate question, but I don't think it matters whether or not the people are seekers, or whether they have been followers of Jesus their entire lives and are only just now having to figure out what God really thinks about this as it becomes a more common cultural question. Instead, I think that the real question that we have to ask ourselves is this: do you really love these people?

It strikes me that Jesus doesn't turn away from difficult questions, and he doesn't soften the blow of the truth that is in his response. Sometimes, people turned away because of it. Other times, they stuck with him. Here is the key: it was never their status (lost, seeker, found, whatever), and it was never their response (turning away or sticking) that guided his answer. It was always truth embedded and presented in love. When Jesus answered a question truthfully, he knew full well that he loved the person he was talking to. That's why he answered with such poignant truth. It was because he loved them.

I had to have a difficult conversation with someone once related to this topic. The first thing I did was ask the question: what does the Bible actually say? What do I actually believe? What does God actually think? This is what it means to love God, at least in part. It means that I actually care about what He thinks, and not just what I feel. But then, ultimately, the rubber meets the road and the theology of what God says meets the humanity and the emotion and the spirit of the person sitting right in front of you who has asked, "what does God think about this?" My pastor friend knew the right answer, but he wasn't sure that he knew the right response. My question would be, "do you really love them?"

When we really love the person we are responding to, to whatever degree our love can be totally genuine, that love will shine through in our response. I'm not telling you what God thinks about an issue to prove that I'm smart, or to prove that I can one-up you, or to belittle you or make you feel bad about yourself. I'm telling you what God thinks because I love you and He loves you and because He loves you and I love you I believe that there will be more joy in the truth of what God says than there will be if I just tell you what you want to hear, or if I couch my answer in such fluff that you leave without being entirely sure what God actually thinks. Love doesn't mean we always agree. Love doesn't mean that we always give the easy answer. Love means that we can give the honest answer, even when it hurts.

I said this to the Elders of our church a while back when we had one of these difficult questions come up and we had to respond, even though we knew that the reason the person was asking is because they were putting out their little litmus test to see if we believed in a God that they could believe in. I said, "if it is not difficult for us to respond, then we are not being Elders." Responses to difficult questions are not filled with pride; they are filled with love. It ought to matter to us when we give an answer to someone that we know might cause them to leave the church or leave the fold of God. Yet we know that it would hurt more, and be more harmful, to neglect what God said, or to answer ambiguously, just for the sake of harmony; just so that we don't rock the boat.

So yes, the question is, "what do you actually believe about the subject?" But then, before we respond, we need to ask ourselves, "do I really love this person like Jesus loves them?" If so, then we respond in truth, embedded and presented in love, not ambiguity.

Freedom from Condemnation

This is part of a four part series on freedom from condemnation. The four parts ended up being Freedom from Condemnation, Repentance, Parenting, and Drivenness.

I've been reflecting on our freedom from condemnation over the last several days. On Sunday night, as I was closing out the Youth Retreat that I was leading, the message of freedom from condemnation was the message I wanted to send them home with. All of our life is filled with law that leads to sin and death. It's law that kills us. Law that reveals our inadequacy and failure, whether the law is the biblical law, some internal law that we create for ourselves, or some external law that others place on us. They all carry condemnation. They remind us that we cannot ultimately succeed. Paul's claim, and ultimately the claim of the Gospel, is that the Christian person is set free from the expectation that we can ultimately attain our righteousness through the law.

The tension for the Christian–and really, it is no tension at all, but it is one that we create–is trying to figure out exactly what that means. One tendency, and the easy one to debunk, is to believe that Paul must be mistaken and that, while Jesus death covers our past sins, it is now on us to make sure that from here on out we fulfill the law more than we break the law. This is simple to throw away because it is not good news. I can't keep the law, and I'm reminded daily. In fact, this is the very thing that the law is designed to do! So if I have to earn something now that Jesus has covered my sins, I'm in deep trouble.

The other tendency is to believe that the law no longer exists, or no longer has any value. Thus, to be set free means that the law has been erased and therefore has no hold on us. We find this idea challenging to accept, and rightfully so. If it's true that there is no law and therefore no expectation, then what has Christ's death really done? It has certainly freed us, but freed us to do what? Has it freed us to sin all the more? Paul is clear that this is not the case, but then by which measure do we understand sin, if there is no law?

No, the freedom Paul speaks of is freedom from the condemnation of the law. That is, because the Law (of God) has been so ultimately fulfilled by Jesus, we no longer live under it's condemnation. It is still completely valid. It is right. It is good. It's just not condemning for us. We don't worry about our own ability to perfectly fulfill what God has commanded, because Jesus has perfectly fulfilled it on our behalf. We don't consider our accomplishments in relationship to the Law to increase our righteousness either. We are already perfectly righteous because of Jesus.

The reason we create a tension where there doesn't have to be one is that we cannot comprehend of a legal system where the law is still valid but the punishments are not. It doesn't make sense that "murder", for example, continues to be wrong, but if we do murder, we get off free with no condemnation. If it is the case that we are truly free from the condemnation of the law, then we really are ultimately free from the law itself. In other words, we are free to live however we wish to live. "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Thus, the tension: is it possible that we are saved, and so therefore we can sin freely?

At the most basic level, the answer is "yes". If it is true that we are totally, one hundred percent covered by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, so that there can be nothing held against us anymore, that there can be no accusers, that we can no longer be condemned, then we are truly and radically free and no amount of sinning after the fact can change it. That's freedom.

A more nuanced answer, however, will be "yes, but we won't". That is, yes, we can sin. We can live however we wish. But we won't, because we have been utterly transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Since it is the Spirit who sets us free, and makes us new, it is the Spirit who empowers us to actually carry out the very spirit of the law; it is the Spirit that enables us to truly love God and love others, and that is the crux of the whole matter. So while we are totally and radically free to go out and live however we want, the transformation in us is such that we will actually begin to live more fully the way that God intended in our love for God and others, so that even without the law we are fulfilling the law. This is why the same apostle who so radically declares our freedom from condemnation and the law can at the same time express confidently that what will be evident in us is fruit; the Spirit will be working. It is not optional. We are being transformed.

This is the first response to the tension we feel in response to our freedom: the "law" that we are now under is the "law of the Spirit"; the transforming spirit that enables us to carry out the intentions of God from the very beginning, which is to love God and others.

The second response to the tension that there can be a valid law without condemnation is really the heart of the Gospel message. Jesus himself says that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. The law continues to carry with it punishments. The great breach of the law was the failure to love God and to love others; the punishment was, and is, death. Jesus repairs the breach and takes the punishment. He perfectly loves God and others, and assumes on himself the punishment that the breach required. We are free from condemnation not because the law no longer carries condemnation–in fact, it does–but we are free from condemnation because Jesus was condemned on our behalf.

The law and the punishments remain in full force, so I have a few options. I can either perfectly fulfill the law, and therefore avoid the punishment, or if I can't perfectly fulfill the law (which I can't), then I can assume the punishment myself. Since I can't perfectly fulfill the law, I can't please God. In fact, my very efforts to do so become hostile to God! So then, since I am a lawbreaker by nature, the still-valid punishment must be satisfied, and it will be satisfied either by myself or by a substitute. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus is the substitute.

So then not only is the law valid, but the punishment is valid as well. For the Christian, however, the punishment has been taken by Jesus, so that we can confidently declare that no matter how much we break the law going forward, there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. The law is still good and right! But we are not condemned when we fail, because of Jesus.

That message of freedom from condemnation not only applies to the biblical law, but to the internal and external law I mentioned. One author (Paul Zahl, I believe) referred to the internal and external law as the bastard children of the law. They are the natural outcome of attempting to define our lives, our righteousness, and our justification by our own efforts, and then taking those expectations and applying them to others, so that we also view their righteousness and justification through that lens. Freedom from condemnation takes those expectations and turns them on their head. They no longer define us. Our life now is defined by Jesus. Our law is defined by Jesus. The things that matter, the expectations of God, are defined by God himself. Even when we fall short of those expectations, we are not condemned; we cannot be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

That is the perspective by which we measure both the internal law and the external law. In both cases, attempting to earn our "rightness" by fulfilling the law will ultimately lead to oppression. This is not to say that there are no good expectations for ourselves; we may expect that we will perform well at our job, for example. There is nothing wrong with that expectation, it is good and right. What the Christian understands is that they are no more righteous if they meet that expectation, just as they are no more condemned if they don't. Their identity is in Jesus. He defines the expectations that matter.

Freedom from condemnation means that we are free from accusation when we don't measure up to expectations of ourselves or others. As a perfectionist, the most freeing thought I can have is that I am still free even when I don't meet the expectations that I place on myself. I am not bound to that perfectionism. Not only do I not have to be perfect, but I don't have to worry about whether or not other people think I'm perfect either. I do not stand condemned anymore. Because Jesus accepts me and has paid my dues, it really doesn't matter much whether others think I am measuring up.

But perhaps even more importantly, however, is the second reality:

Freedom from condemnation means that we are able to disagree on whether or not an expectation is valid to begin with.

There is no doubt that Paul instructs the early Christians to certain standards: they will be hard working, for example. If you are lazy, you are not considered "needy"; you are considered "lazy". There are other expectations that he allows, but doesn't necessarily condone. Celebration of certain religious feasts, for example. It's not harmful, he would say, so long as you don't think you are earning your righteousness from it. If it helps you focus on Jesus and his righteousness, enjoy it! But since you earn no righteousness from it, you can't expect others to join you in your feasting. It's not a necessity; it's a false expectation.

False expectations abound. "All good parents feed their kids organic food." "All cool teenagers play sports." "All men make a lot of money." "Successful people drive brand new cars." "True Christians read their Bible an hour a day." And one my wife is particularly passionate about, not for her sake but for other moms who feel the pressure so powerfully, "All good moms have immaculate houses." Here's the thing about this expectations: some of them are just wrong and unbiblical ("Successful people drive brand new cars.") Others might work for you, but aren't binding on others (Buying only organic food or keeping an immaculate house). Freedom from condemnation means you are free to make the distinction between the expectations that matter, and those that don't. The key is remembering that if you can keep them, you aren't more justified, and if you can't, you're not more condemned.

You are totally justified, and never condemned, because of Jesus. This is the freedom of the Gospel.

Restarting & The Christian Life

The Christian life is a life of restarts.

I read or heard something recently that put the lie to the old adage that God is the God of second chances. Now that I'm thinking about it, I believe it was in a sermon from Tullian Tchividjian. He said that to believe that God is the God of second chances is to believe that there is still something of our own effort that is at play in the Christian life. That somehow, God is judging us by our mess-ups, but thankfully, he gives us another chance. Tullian (or whoever it was) said that God is the God of one chance and a second Adam. That is, Adam had a shot, and he blew it. But Jesus is the second Adam, and he succeeds. Speaking in biblical terms (and Gospel terms), we are all going to either be judged by the first Adam and the second Adam. Jesus wasn't really a "second chance"; he came to fix the problem that occurred when God gave us a chance at all.

In any event, this is the Gospel: that because God's love for me is not dependent on me at all, I can continually repent and just start over. God's not waiting for me to mess up. He's not waiting for me to succeed. I already have succeeded because of Jesus. So whatever I do, whether I do it well or poorly, I do out of a genuine freedom that I've found because of God's love for me in Jesus.

I say all that for a couple reasons. First, because I read a blog just recently about how to start blogging, and the author said, "just start writing." Stop thinking about the design, what you are going to say, whatever. Just start writing. He's right that during my days of journaling, which I've mentioned before, when I was writing 1500+ words a day and did so for more than a year, I didn't ask myself each morning what I was going to write about. I just got up and started writing, and out it came. So, he said, most bloggers get caught up wondering what they are going to write about when most times, the solution is just to start writing. (I ought to add here that I'm hoping to go back and find a link to his "10 things I would tell myself if I restarted my blog" or whatever it was titled, but to do that right now would be to defeat the purpose of just starting to write...)

The hope by even stating that is to maybe get my head in gear to actually start writing again. Also–don't worry about the audience. That was sort of his advice, I think. Or another piece of it. I can't remember. If not, I think maybe he intended it to be. The point is that I'm not entirely sure that you could know who the audience is when you begin; also, you might find (as I often do) that you are so beholden to who is reading it and what they might think or not think or whatever, and thus create what psychologists/sociologists call the "invisible audience" that you don't actually write what you want to write or even think, but you write with this invisible audience constantly in mind. How many more people would write world and life-changing things down if they weren't concerned about what their invisible audience thought about it before it even got onto the paper?

Secondly, I was struck by this idea of consistent restarts as I was preparing a message for a youth retreat I'm leading in a couple of weeks. I was reading from the Gospel Centered Life curriculum, and it mentioned the two sides of the Christian life that we tend to default towards: either legalism, which is assuming that we can meet all the criteria of God's law (usually by bending the law to make our actions seem less bad), or license, which is the assumption that since we can't meet God's law, and yet he forgives us anyway, we may as well go on sinning. In either case, it's a failure to understand the Gospel. Again, the Gospel is that God loves me in Jesus Christ, and I find my identity in Him. Not through my good deeds (where I might, in some miraculous alignment of desire, will, and action actually succeed in meeting God's law) and not through my bad deeds (where I constantly believe that I am a failure because I can't attain God's law.) Instead, I am confident that since Jesus has fulfilled the law, I am perfectly covered by his righteousness and thus, I am now free to do God's law (freedom=free from guilt, shame, the burden of the thought of failure, freedom from the eternal consequences). 

So there you have it. When you understand the Gospel, the Christian life becomes less about missed opportunity and failed chances and much more about just saying, let's try that again. Let's restart. The past can actually remain in the past. The future is wide open. Let's give it another go.