Our daughter’s birthday is three days after mine so we usually celebrate together. I took her for lunch on Friday, and last night the family went to a small restaurant for a bigger birthday party. She picked the place because some friends of hers were the evening’s entertainment. We enjoyed good guitar music and Paul’s original songs, a combination of “acoustic folk, roots and blues” with “well-thought out lyrics, solid vocals, and occasional blues harp accompaniment.”
Other than a few people at our table, likely there were no Christians in the place, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I didn’t hear any blasphemy or see anything that blatantly dishonored God. Certainly last night’s experience gave me pause when I read the devotional for today. Its focus was from Revelation 2 where Jesus is speaking to the church at Ephesus:
“I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars. . . .” (Revelation 2:2)
The author of the devotional takes up the phrase “you cannot bear those who are evil” and writes that those who love Jesus “should be so consumed with God’s glory that we hurt when He is dishonored.” He also quotes Psalm 69:9, “Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, And the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.”
When I read it, I thought about the word “evil” and realized that there are degrees of it. Normally I see things in black and white, and certainly God has two categories for people: those who know and love Him and those who do not. However, out of the sinners who know or do not know God, there is a wide range of capacity for good and for evil.
Even Christians can behave in evil ways, acting the same as those who do not know God. The Bible is filled with strong warnings, rebukes and exhortations to the people of God who act as if they are atheists. I thought of one incidence where Paul writes to a church about their need to avoid evil people. However, what he says is remarkable, even a surprise:
I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner — not even to eat with such a person. (1 Corinthians 5:9-11)
He could have told them to stay away from unsaved people who drink beer and sing songs about human events, but he didn’t do that. Instead he tells them to stay away from Christians who do sinful things (that seems far worse).
In other words, “fun” that does not dishonor God’s name, even though it isn’t honoring Him either, isn’t the concern that Paul had. He says it is not possible to avoid being around sinners. What he is more concerned with is that Christians tolerate sinful activities among themselves. We are supposed to honor Jesus Christ because He is our Lord and Savior, our Giver of eternal life, our source of all good things, not live like everyone else. Our lives are to be different from the ordinary.
My husband and I are never sure what others think of us when we are in public places. He always gives thanks for the food. Last night, anyone within earshot heard him honor God. We welcomed two people to the empty chairs at our table as the restaurant filled to capacity. (It turned out that we knew one of them, and both are Christians.) The singer gave our daughter and me pleasant but low-key birthday greetings. We left the place without feeling “contaminated” because there were no lewd jokes, loud swearing, or rude behaviors.
Jesus ate and drank with sinners and was criticized for it. Whoever found fault with Him didn’t know their Bible very well; it is impossible to eat and drink with anyone who is not a sinner! Jesus also refused to spend much time with the self-righteous or those who called themselves God’s people yet acted worse than the people they looked down at for being “publicans and sinners.”
All this tells me that God is far more concerned with the sin of His people than the sin of those who do not know Him. In Christ, I have the capacity to say no to sin, and whenever I don’t, I am dishonoring Him. Those who do not know Christ do not have that capacity, and most of them have no idea it is available. That is why Jesus spent time with sinners; His presence opened many eyes and made sinners desire what He could give them.
It is our hope and desire that Jesus may have given us just a small role in doing the same thing at this birthday party where we celebrated His goodness in the midst of a group of people who do not know Him.
This morning’s news about the current conflict in the middle east featured an interview with an Israeli newswoman who spoke of repeated rocket attacks from Palestine, something they agreed not to do in a document that was signed in 2000. She said that after eight years of living in fear, they decided this must stop so have attacked in an effort to put an end to this “terrorism.”
Aside from the right and wrong of their retaliation, I saw grief on the face of this woman. She was deeply concerned for the well-being of her people. As I read Genesis 6:5-6, I began thinking about grief and how it feels. The New International Version says this:
The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
The last line stopped me. God’s heart filled with pain? Do sinners have the power to make God hurt? Or is this saying something other than, “Every time you sin, God feels pain”?
The last book of the Bible says that there is no sorrow and pain in heaven for us. It doesn’t seem right that God who lives in heaven should feel pain, at least not the physical pain people feel when someone does something that hurts them. So I read these verses in a few other Bible versions. The New King James says:
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
In 17 versions, only two of them mention pain; the others speak of grief. Is there a difference? I also wondered if “sorry” means “regret” and if it does, what does that say about the love of God? Does it mean that every time I sin He wishes I’d never been born?
I am not a Hebrew scholar but by doing my best, I found that “grief” as used in this passage is from root words that mean to carve and to torment. I can relate to this. When something happens to cause me grief, I feel as if someone cut something from my heart. The sense of loss is painful, but not so much like the pain of an injury; it is more an emotional distress.
I also looked up the word “sorry” and found that it has more to do with compassion than it does pain, more like the feeling Jesus had when He saw the lost multitudes like sheep without a shepherd. He was sorry for their sakes, not because they were hurting Him.
Before I became a Christian, when someone sinned I may have thought it was funny, or disgusting. I also might have felt angry or hurt, particularly if the sin was against me or someone that I cared about. However, after Christ came into my life, I noticed a difference. Now I usually feel sorry and have emotional distress for the sinner, not for myself. They have done a bad thing that will affect their relationship with God and with others. I feel sad for their sakes and have a compassion that torments my heart in that I didn’t want sin to happen in their lives. My grief is not about me, but about the sinner. I also grieve in the sense that there is a loss of purity and a brokenness that is created by that sin.
One or two verses should never form a person’s theology. I need to read the entire Bible to get the whole picture of God’s revelation of Himself. I particularly need to look at Jesus. Hebrews 1:3 says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. . . .”
When I see Him, I see God cut to the heart when I sin, not so much because He is deeply offended and wounded, but because He has such great compassion and wants better things for me. He aches because I’ve fallen short.
In Genesis, God took action to save “righteous Noah” who had faith in Him, and his family. He destroyed the rest. At the cross, He took action to save all who place their faith in Him and in the redemptive work of His Son. Instead of a destructive flood, I experience the washing or cleansing of my life. He nails my old self to the cross with Christ and replaces it with a new nature. As that old self fades into oblivion, I experience His compassion. I also feel His feelings because He lives in me. Therefore, sin makes me sad and I grieve over it, both my own and that of others.
The flood and destruction in Genesis seem a horrible thing, yet these verses are not about what sinners do to God. They are about His holiness and how His emotions are touched by our unsaved condition. The rest of the Bible affirms that He cares more about me and how I live than He does about Himself. If He didn’t, there would be no sending of His Son, no offer of salvation by faith, and no hope of escaping judgment’s destruction.