Schizo-believers

You’re nuts; crazy I tell you!

How many times have you exclaimed that to someone, or worst yet, thought it about yourself? It speaks to the security that many have which is being attacked by a different, often diametrically opposed thought which they cannot possibly believe themselves embracing and adopting. Welcome to the challenge of Grace!

Today, most believers accept a watered-down version of the message of grace. They recognize that they were once a sinner and are now saved by grace. Their joy in getting into heaven by the skin of their teeth is an anchor to an otherwise “normal” lifestyle. They attend church, fellowship with other believers, pray, and read their bibles as regularly as is possible. This is the grace-filled life they have been taught that pleases God.

Yet, miss one of these normal “Christian” routines and there are consequences to pay for the displeasure, and if taken to an extreme, wrath, that God has stored up for you by not doing what He has commanded you to do. Now a whole process of events kicks in to render the believer back into “right-standing” with God because of a sin, a transgression of the covenant. Repentant prayer, confession of sin, washing in the Blood, guilt offerings and a host of other “religious-based” absolution programs flood the guilt-ridden psyche of believers. But whatever it takes to get back to “normal” Christianity.

Paul tells believers in Ephesians to imitate God like good little children. John tells us that God is Love. Both of these passages kick-at-the-goads of believers dealing with guilt issues. There is no possible way that they can be like God and show love when there is a price to pay for the sin they have committed as a believer, which is only a manifestation of a deeper issue of the Adamic nature that they came from. Grace doesn’t help in the matter, its fullest strength only applied at the initial salvation experience; it will only place me into a second-class citizen of the kingdom now.

To all you believers who have or are experiencing these emotions I can only respond with the opening line from this passage, You’re nuts; crazy I tell you! “Well that’s not very God-like, is it?” I’m only mirroring the attitude expressed by your feelings and I hope you’re ready to hear this truth: your feelings are not imitating God one bit. So why is that? The best term I can come up with is that you are a schizophrenic believer. If you want to take that personal, okay, it only adds to the evidence of the term. But let me explain the number one reason for this term.

As I’ve stated, the “New Testament” reality of all believers is to imitate God who is love in all of their activities. However, most of the preaching given today is “Old Testament” types and shadows which shows the wrath of God in a number of ways. The Grace message is presented as a band-aid to the sin issue in man (I know that many will give me a lot of flack for that statement, so just sit still) so that the “old and new” can become one. This paints a “bad-cop, good-cop” scenario between God and Jesus. The underlying theme is that there is a penalty, or price, that justice requires to be paid to balance the scales.

Follow this out and you’ll see that most believers recognize God as the judge, and Jesus as the price. Now extend this thought further so that it crosses the path of Paul’s exhortation to imitate God and what is the natural conclusion? Believers, who judge first, love second. The path I took might seem a bit simplistic to the religious elite but let’s call it the shortest distance between two points, my points being that if you see God as the administrator of a human penal issue, the best way to beat the conviction is to cast your judgment first because God will still love them. Yet notice that under this opera there is no mention of grace, or that it only comes in during one of those moments when the convict throws themselves upon the mercies of the court.

So let’s try to shed a little more light on this “penal” mentality. Paul states that the wages of sin is death. So why did Jesus die on the cross? Was it the judgment of God or was it because Jesus bore all the sins of the world? Before your reflex move to judgment, you better consider that according to Paul, God was in Jesus on the cross reconciling the world to Him. How is it possible that if this is a judicial matter you would have the judge working against the very sentence he pronounced? Hmm, what kind of term would describe this action?

What if we consider that the entire model we have been presented of how God relates to us and we relate to him isn’t from a penal mentality? If we take away the judge and the need for balanced scales of justice requiring a price to be paid, what happens to your theology? What happens to your interactions with people? Impossible! If that is what you’re thinking then realize that your thought has just moved you into the divine nature of God where all things are possible. This is the realm of Grace.

Understand this, while John’s revelation that God is love occurs almost at the end of the bible, it is an eternal revelation that runs from the beginning of the bible to the end. It is His nature and every thought and words that come from His nature are contained within the word grace. “God so loved the world that He gave…” is not a grace act just for believers – it applies for the entire world as a reflection of his nature not as a judge, but as love.

Since Jesus and the Father are one, Jesus going to the cross is a display of His love for the all the world. When the last Adam died on the cross, all died with Him, just as when Christ rose again all rose with Him. (Don’t go and get all bent up here, I did not say all are saved! There is a difference.) If you need to view Jesus’ place on the cross as retribution for sin, then you must also apply it across the board as a final payment for the entire world, past, present, and future. He is the last Adam, the last sacrifice, the last convict in a divine courtroom where the last sentence rendered, at last, the end of all the law. “Where there is no law, there is no transgression (sin).”

So here is the challenge: Do you believe that God’s grace found and expressed in all that Jesus accomplished and finished is greater news to proclaim than the present penal-salvation model you’ve operated from? Until you agree that it is, you are living under a sentence that has already been paid, and you cannot add anything more to it by your actions.