Love Beyond Measure

Nothing diminishes us more than the desire to be someone else--to possess in ourselves a benefit someone else has.  At perfect points in our lives, the Lord gives us something...an insight, a strength, an ability, an accomplishment and it is as magically attached to us as our shadow.  Our problem is we do not trust the Lord enough to be full of love in how He distributes His gifts; specifically how He allots them with regard to ourselves.  If the Lord did not like you, then He would never have made you, never have let you in on His grace, never have called you friend.  Our God is perfectly truthful in all of His dealings; if not then He is a devil and should be despised.  He has told you that He loves you and that love is complete and without room for more so in it He audits what comes your way and does so to guarantee your total joy.  But when you snivel and complain and try to wiggle out from under the dominion of Christ, you make a mess of all you have.  Like a child who breaks his toy because he wants his brother's toy, you smash your own happiness in the discontent you hold in your hand.   The parable of the workers who were all paid the same wage but worked for different lengths of time is not a teaching on the seeming unequal treatment of the Father; it is rather a statement of how childish we all are with regard to the generosity of God.  Our work is in God's strength and His ability, our adherence to the scriptures is by His power and determination, our popularity and success  is through His good fortune.  We are God's in every way and the sway of our lives is His too so it is sheer lunacy to get bent out of shape over the wage He gives you...it is far more than He needs to give and it is perfect in its ultimate good.  What if those workers, instead of moaning about the coin handed them at the end of the day rejoiced instead that it was a coin and it had the blessing of God stamped upon it.  The coin could become a thousand coins in a moment as the Father determined and it could be kept at one because the one was more likely to bring happiness than ten or ten thousand.    Who would in their right mind want van Gogh's great talent at the cost of acquiring at the same time his misery or would beg incessantly for Hitler's power to attract a crowd and have along with it his filthy end.  And on the other hand, how many of us shoot for Stephen's lone convert as the end game to our work...Imagine the child complaining about the terrible drive down to L.A. just as his father pulls into the parking lot at Disneyland.   

But he answered one of them, "Friend, I am not being unfair to you..." Matthew 20: 13a NIV

The Movement Past Conscience

At what point do you suddenly realize you have gone too far, looked too long, reacted too harshly, listened to too much, pushed past where you should have stopped?  Is it when you heard something telling you to stop, when you felt a tug to quit, when your mind began to cloud over with guilt?  When is too much too much? We speak of the conscience as the perpetual nerdy friend who doesn’t like to have a good time.  Or else the conscience is the ultimate arbiter of good and evil, the one sure scale on which to measure right from wrong.  We hear this sort of statement often.  “Well, it may not be right for you but it is for me.”  The implication is that personal conscious is the guide for right living.

Every one of us has some sort of conscience; it is along with language the mark of being human.  Shades of right and wrong do not slip into the thinking of the beasts; it is we who sink into that abyss, or would it be better to say who climb those heights.  Because the conscience is natural and organic, it is also arbitrary.  There is not a “uniform” conscience; one that defines us all.  Your conscience will not be the same as your friend’s or even your brother’s. Joseph Stalin had one conscience, your uncle another.  It is impossible to say conclusively that Adolph Hitler did not follow his conscience in what he did nor that Mother Teresa always followed hers.  My “too far” probably is not yours and will not be Mick Jagger’s.

Is there though a real “too far”, just as there is a real mile or a real pound?  How do we measure right and wrong, good and bad in actual time and space?  Does it exist…such a true measure? Jesus was asked by the rich young ruler what good thing he had to do to inherit eternal life.  This was not a simpleton’s question.  It was asked by a true thinker who recognized the human condition.  At some point we cannot just rely on our conscience; we need to look into what is always right and what is always wrong because it does matter.

There is something most casual readers of the New Testament fail to realize and that is how Jesus analyzed his own behavior and approach to situations.  He let the scripture and the guidance of the Father determine each step He took.  At the time of temptation in the wilderness, Jesus used the Bible to arbitrate for Him how He should act.  That was almost an unconscious guide because He used His mind to know it so well.  Clearly Jesus studied the Bible enough to know at each space in life what it might have to say about a matter.

But there was another hedge He had in deciding right and wrong.  He constantly communicated with the Father on what He was doing and thinking and facing. 

This statement of Jesus in John is most informative.  “For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.”  (John 12:49 NIV)  Somehow, and we are not told how, Jesus heard from the Father even in the details of His behavior what He was to do.  At the point of what specific things to say at any given moment and in what tone of voice to use, Jesus had direction from the Father on good and bad, right and wrong.  This is different from the prodding of conscience; this is a direct line to what is really right and what is really wrong.  If we could get past our individualistic and arbitrary conscience to the actual measure of right and wrong, we would know where to start in living.

How was Jesus so perfectly in tune with the guiding of the Father?  He was, like the first Adam free of sin and so had the same ability the first Adam had.  He could and did walk with the Father as He went about His business.  Like the two disciples who went with Jesus on the road to Emmaus and heard the real accounting of how the crucifixion and resurrection fit into the plan of God, we too can “walk with God” and hear from Him as Jesus heard from the Father.  We have the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit, God too just as the Father and Son are God, would by faith in Christ be with us.  And Jesus also has promised to be with us always.  What do we make of this?

We have at our finger tips, or even closer always the right and wrong there to know and understand.  It is not a matter of my right and wrong or your right and wrong; it is right and wrong as it really is.  We are within reach at any moment when Christ is ours by faith the knowing of good and bad.  Not just knowing by a swing and perhaps a miss but a knowing that is certain.

How do we get to this point where we know exactly what to say and how to say it, what to do and how to do it?  The caveat is simple.  You must have decided that is what you want to know.  If you do not really want to know, Jesus will let you walk away from it just as easily as the rich young ruler did.  But if you want to know, you must be determined to know the scriptures.  You must be able to tell the difference between what is a really right or wrong and what is merely a tangle of your conscience.  There are miles of issues we can discuss that have a level of right and wrong to them but if we do not know the scripture…really know the scripture, we cannot be certain we are not just sifting them through our conscience rather than the actual right and actual wrong of a matter.  That is why it is so difficult discussing the big moral issues of our age: abortion, homosexuality, integrity, war, globalization, pornography.  The scripture is either ignored or not known well enough to arbitrate between consciences.

There is a bigger issue though before us and that is how to get at the details of right and wrong as arbitrated directly by God.  It is easy to just lay out three bullet points or six directives but if that were the case, we would have far more Christians acting upon right and wrong.  The hearing from God is much more organic and familial.  You must become familiar with the way God speaks to you directly. It is an experiment in holiness.  As God prods you in a right or a wrong, whether by the remembrance of a scripture or some very personal way He guides you, then you act upon it and even if you feel guilty from your conscience or disappointed because of your lusts, you fight through it and do the thing or don’t do it.  The next time you sense the prod of God, you act upon it then and there.  The more you do this, them more familiar you will be with the actual God behind you way of seeing and thinking.  You will become more comfortable with the real presence of God; more alert to Him too.  Every child has a conscience; only the child of God has the true right and wrong within.  You must though like Jesus give God room in your heart to guide you and holiness will not just be something you consider, it will be yours as a real possession.