March 17, 2008

Jesus is the measure of truth

Christians should delight in doing God’s will and if consecrated to Him, my heart should never begrudge obedience, but something has been bothering me about the way my devotional book, God is Enough, has been emphasizing this emotional connection to what it means to be dead to sin and alive to God. Today’s reading brings out what I think is an error in the author’s thinking.

The reading says, “Dying and death are definite words and can only mean that that which is said to be “crucified,” and is therefore called dead, must be in a condition spiritually analogous to what death is physically, that is, without life or feeling or capacity to suffer. Therefore, the doing of God’s will cannot cause suffering, for the part of the being that dislikes God’s will and shrinks from doing it, is dead. Only that part is alive that loves God’s will and delights to do it.”

I’ve been taught to measure all teachings by the Person of Jesus Christ. If that teaching fits His words and life, then it is true. If not, then I need to avoid it. In this case, I question the idea that a truly spiritual person will never suffer as they willingly obey God.

When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He struggled as I will never struggle. Doing the will of God meant that He would suffer and die, and as He contemplated this, so great was His anguish that He sweat blood. He was never unwilling, and even said, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not my will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42), yet the suffering didn’t stop with His declaration of devotion and obedience. For Jesus, doing the will of God at Calvary didn’t seem delightful.

Hebrews 5 describes what He was going through. It says that “in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.

When I read that, I wonder what it would mean if Jesus had gone to the cross without any capacity to feel the horror of it? What if He was so detached from what was happening to Him that He didn’t even noticed any pain during this great obedience? What if Jesus had been physically and emotionally dead to suffering as this devotional reading describes?

I cannot fathom that. Would such ability to obey God without feeling any pain not say that God’s wrath on sin, even though it meant death for Jesus, was not such a big deal? Would it say that Jesus was not fully human?

Of course the new nature in Christ desires to please God and is not interesting in shrinking back from the hard stuff, but to go so far as to say that doing the hard stuff will be a delightful thing does not fit with the life of Christ, nor with His death.

Hebrews 12 says that I am to look at Jesus, “the author and finisher of my faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.” If obedience was delightful, why use the word endure?

The next few verses say, “Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.

None of that sounds to me like a walk in the park, not for Jesus and not for me. If the writer is trying to say that only the old sinful nature will suffer and struggle with obeying the will of God, then Jesus had a sinful nature. That cannot be true.

Instead, the new nature that He gave me (that is like His glorious nature), is not emotionally dead. Jesus felt emotion in His sacrificial obedience, therefore such feelings are entirely possible for me.

Besides, if obedience was so delightful and always felt so wonderful (as the devotional suggests), why then do Christians, myself included, sometimes shrink from it? I may not sweat blood, and I know that after I obey, good things will come out of it, but I can still feel the struggle of it, just as Jesus did. I cannot agree that obedience is always delightful, because Jesus sweat blood. I cannot agree that my old nature is in control every time I do not jump up and down in wild delight at the commands of God.

Beware of teaching that says to be a Christian means that as long as you gladly obey the will of God, you will not experience negatives, emotional or otherwise. This is simply not true.

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