An Atheist's Anthem ...

 “If I only saw a sign, I would believe.”  This is a familiar chorus I have heard from nearly every non-believer I have encountered.  Sadly, it is also a familiar refrain I have heard from many Christians.  We look for the impossible to validate a faith that does not make any sense.  We ask to see the impossible for ourselves, unwilling to take the words or testimony of others on this account.  It needs to be personal.  It needs to be tangible.  Or else, how could I believe?  And in this we destroy our journey-of-faith and wish for certainty in its place.  But be honest, how could you ever be certain, of the impossible?  Even if you witness a single incident of it, will one witness be enough to believe in all the others, and for the rest of your life?  So if you must witness more than one incident, how many will be enough?  All of them?  Would it really take time travel to finally make us believe that what is recorded in scripture was real?  If you are looking here, you are cheating yourself.  There is another venue, and something a lot more personal for each of us.

To begin, certainty is not the goal.  If I asked you to trust me, how would you go about it?  You might evaluate our interactions, our history together.  You might conclude that if my behavior was always in line with your expectations, that you could extend trust to me, and then see what happens.  But therein lies the catch.  No matter how I have behaved with you in the past, no matter how consistent our history may be, each time you extend trust to me, you take a risk.  If past is prologue, then you may believe the risk to be low.  But that “belief” is still a “belief” you hold about my trustworthiness, based on a myriad of factors, but none the less a “belief” that I will not let you down.  This is how trust works. 

You may trust your mom for example, because your mom has demonstrated that she loves you.  Even if she screws up, she still loves you, though her mistake proves her human.  You may even elect to extend trust to her again after a huge mistake, because there has been only one (or few you know about), and generally she does not make them.  But even with mom (mistakes or no), every time you extend trust, you hold a “belief” that it is worth it, to trust her.  Certainty is impossible.  Because you cannot absolutely predict what anyone else (including God) may do, or why they do it.  In the end, you have ideas about it, guesses about it, even educated guesses about it.  But behavior is a tricky thing to absolutely predict, and so people surprise us sometimes (for better or for worse).  To trust anyone, is to embrace “belief”, at the exclusion of absolute certainty.

But where God is concerned, it is more blame that goes around, than trust.  That has directly to do with our picture of “who or what” God is.  The media, our parents, our church, our friends, our professors, may have all played a role in forming an image in your mind about who God is.  Suffice it to say, it boils down to one of 2 main images.  Most folks think God is a version of Santa Clause.  We go to Him to ask for stuff.  We are happy when we get it.  Mad when we don’t.  But are generally quick to ruthlessly blame God for anything bad that happens, under the logic that Santa should have been watching and been able to prevent the bad stuff before it ever happened.  After all, He has done it for others, why not me?  Way too many Christians have this exact image of God, despite all the scriptures.  Most Atheists just don’t believe in any kind of Santa Clause, or any god, but if there were a God, He would be to blame for everything.

In the Santa Clause picture of God, no trust is required.  Neither is certainty.  If you get the stuff you asked for, hallelujah.  If not, it must not be in God’s time yet.  So Santa has a slot machine sort of response to what you ask for, the odds are low, but you never know.  How could faith ever grow in you, if this is the image of God you believe in, or have the most experience with?  And believe me, Satan is WAY too happy to keep this image of God in your mind.  Perhaps enough to grant you some of those wishes himself, in order for you to never shed this image of the God you pray to.  But our real God, needs us to trust Him.  That trust is a critical component of His ability to save us – from us.  Denying yourself to let some random God you don’t really know remake who you are, is just not likely.  Better to keep the Santa image, and just hope for the best.

So God’s problem is getting you to stop thinking of Him in terms of doling out rewards and punishments, and start thinking of Him for the Being He truly is.  The other image of God (a saving God).  God wants to save you, from you.  He loves you (being the primary and singular motive of His).  God sees sin as the punishment and the addictive disease.  And He has only one way to rid you of it.  But for that to work, you have to trust Him enough to let Him do it, in spite of how it looks.  Trust, in spite of common sense.  Trust, in spite of what everyone else tells you.  Trust, that He is able to do the impossible in you, where history demonstrates, you are clearly unable to do it.  So if that is His mission, and trust is what He needs from you.  Offering you certainty does nothing to accomplish it.  If you witness a 1,000 different acts of the impossible, all you will have learned is that it is possible for God to do the impossible.  You might have already imagined that.  But you will still have no reason to let Him reconstruct who you are.  A thousand elements of certainty do not build trust, they build resentment.  Back to the Santa Clause image – now that I have seen 1,000 impossible things – I intend to open complaints about why I did not benefit from any of them.  A thousand acts of love and impossibility for others, does me not one bit of good.  So now I am mad at Santa, because there was only coal in my stocking, while my neighbor got Barbie’s playhouse.

The first problem with asking for signs, is that it does not bring trust.  The second, is that it will only make you mad they were not for you, or selfish if they were (who does not want more miracles in their own lives).  And lastly they are usually requested as a condition of belief (instead of a result of it) doing nothing to foster trust, so there will never be enough of them, to really make a believer out of you.  You will either find a way to let your skepticism reduce the impossible, to a scientifically explainable trick (or perhaps a random set of circumstances that worked out just right despite the incredible odds, like say the hypothesis of evolution) - or you will find you have an insatiable appetite for more signs, at the cost of what you profess is a belief.  In any case, the mission God has to save you, from you, by remaking you fails because He grants your wishes for signs as a condition of belief.  A change in thinking, on the other hand, will pull back the veil that has blinded your eyes to the impossible.  What you witness after a change in how you perceive life, is going to be mind blowing.  Sounds crazy right now, but that’s the point.  It is crazy.  But it is also real.  And it will be a lot more personal to you than you could possibly imagine now.

Take as a case in point the story of two types of people in the gospel of Matthew the 27^th chapter.  Picking up in verse 38 it reads … “Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.”  You could argue these men might have been believers in the Jewish faith (though obviously not perfect observers of the Law).  It is not known exactly what they believed at least from Matthew’s account.  However we know from other versions of the good news, that one repented before he died, the other did not.  Dieing in the company of known criminals tends to make one look like a criminal even if this is not true.  This death will do nothing to uplift the reputation of Christ.  But Jesus does not care about His reputation.  In His trial all manner of lies were told about Him, and His response was perfect silence.  No condemnation, no calling people out on their sins, only silence.  But Jesus was eager to speak to anyone who seeks salvation.  When the dying theif seeks Jesus, Jesus responds, no matter what kind of physical pain He was in.  When that same theif was hurling insults at Him, Jesus remained silent.

Matthew continues in verse 39 saying … “And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, [verse 40] And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”  Dying in the company of thieves, and up on a Roman cross, was decidedly NOT the sign the Jewish people were looking for where it comes to proving Jesus was God.  These were believers.  These were those who studied scriptures.  And yet their ideas about what God was supposed to do – that is, to throw off Roman oppression and setup a Kingdom that would last forever – overpowered all the other texts and prophecies that predicted exactly this part of the mission of God to save us.  “Believers” who desired something else of God, and refused to accept what God was actually doing to truly answer their prayers.  When Santa does not behave how we want Him to, what good is Santa right?  And so in this case, the very fact Jesus was actually fulfilling prophecy, was the very fact that disqualified Him as being the Messiah in their minds.  Sound familiar?

How often do we ask God for a thing, and threaten Him that if He does not do it, we will believe no longer?  Save me.  Save my child.  Save my spouse.  From the disease and death that stalk them.  If the results are not what we expect – we become angry and decide there cannot be a God – or else why did He not answer my prayer.  But perhaps He did, just not in the way you expected.  Perhaps from Gods point of view, saving you, your child, your spouse, for eternity is most important to all of you.  Should earthly life end today, and infinite life begin tomorrow, reunited, with infinite love in all of your hearts – is this not the preferred outcome all of you would want, even if it comes at the price of shortening how long you live in this world today?  Let’s say instead of focusing on the eternal, that God allowed you the answer to your prayers, and saved that life in the here and now.  As time passes, you, or your child, or your spouse, begin to change (not for the better).  Perhaps over time, one of you decides there is no God at all, and if there is, He is not worth following.  Sin is more “fun”, instead of the disease it truly is.  If that is how you meet your end in this world, and the eternal world is sacrificed in the process.  Did God really do what was in your best interest all those years ago when He saved you only to meet this new end?  And God knows what you will choose long before it happens.  Santa might let this play out.  But God would rather it didn’t.  God would prefer to cherish you while your free will choice reciprocates that love, rather than let you exist long enough to discard it under the weight of sin’s embrace.

So because God does not do what we want or expect, does not make Him any less trustworthy.  Keep in mind Jesus was doing what ALL of us need for salvation.  Not trying to prove Himself to nay-sayers at the time and place of His death.  Matthew continues in verse 41 saying … “Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, [verse 42] He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.”  And there we have it, the Athiest’s Anthem coming right out of the mouths of the very top leadership of the church at that time.  What image of God do you suppose they had, the one of a saving God who would die in our place, and fulfill prophecy – or the one of Santa who doles out punishment and reward emphasis on punishment.  And had Jesus descended off that cross in front of their eyes, gliding right down in front of them fully healed, what do you suppose their response would have been?  They would have hated Him all the more, because now Roman oppression still abounded, and Jesus would be impossible to kill after all.  Think about it, they already had ALL the previous miracles Jesus did to consider in weighing whether or not He was the Messiah, and NONE of them changed their course of action or belief.  They chose to dismiss every previous sign and still pursue killing Him.

And should Jesus have chosen to assuage His own ego, by proving to these priests He truly did have this power, what kind of God does that truly make Him?  A God of ego?  Who would gladly sacrifice our eternal considerations for those of the moment?  How could we be saved then?  It is often our expectations of what God should do, that could never be met anyway.  Because we come from a place of ego and selfishness, where God comes from a totally opposite perspective.  Jesus believes it is better to die to save all of us, than to do anything shortsighted, and gain nothing.  Jesus never used any of His power to benefit Himself.  Instead He used it unceasingly on us, the objects of His love, restoring us, removing the pain of sin and death from us.  Our restoration tops the mind of a saving God.  Not just getting rid our physical diseases, but getting rid of the way more deadly sinful disease of bad motives driving bad choices we continue to embrace.  Curing us of our desire to sin, is way more important.  Saving us from an eternal perspective way more important than saving us in the moment.

The ridicule continues as Matthew writes picking up in verse 43 saying … “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. [verse 44] The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.”  Matthew hears the mockery of the thieves, but misses the repentance of the one.  Here we have an example of Jesus suffering the same fate as we do from time to time.  Jesus trusted in His Father.  And yet, He was dying, very painfully in this world.  The Father had NO interest in seeing His Son be tortured and die.  But the Father had a GREAT interest in seeing all of humanity be saved and reconciled unto Himself.  The death of His Son was that price.  In order that the need for Justice be satisfied.  So Jesus dies, in extreme pain we inflicted.  And the Father must sit there in silence and watch.  The eternal salvation outweighing the salvation of the moment.  This is how great our God desires to save us in the eternal realm, not just the here and now.  It is a different way of thinking.

So the repentant thief represents one kind of person, the mocking priests another.  For those mocking priests, no sign would ever be enough.  And frankly the next section of texts are going to have some doozies.  For the repentant thief however, for those of us who seek salvation from Jesus, what will happen in us is a change.  You will note that repentant theif was NOT saved from the cross.  He died in this world, but with certainty about his own place in the next one.  And change began to occur even in the worst dying circumstances any of us can imagine.  We too will become different than we are today.  Not because we work for it.  But because we begin to choose to trust Him, and allow Him to remake us however He sees fit.  Then change is surely on its way in us.  We read scripture differently.  We begin to see love as the primary motivation, instead of some wild afterthought.  We begin to reason differently.  And over time, the blinders of bad choices, the blinders of doubt, fall away – and what is revealed is a regular diatribe of the impossible happening all the time.  For example, the changing of hearts.  Not just of others, but of my own.  Learning how to love differently, and more deeply, than you had ever imagined.  No seminar could ever get this done.  But allowing Jesus full access sure does.  Without Jesus, things tend to degenerate.  But with Jesus, things tend to improve, especially in areas where it matters the most.

That sign, that impossibility, is very personal, very tangible, and you will live with its benefit every day of your life.  Does it cure your cancer?  No.  It could.  But it does not have to.  It fixes something more important.  The quality of your days expands exponentially, whether you are beset by physical pain and disease, or whether you are healed from them.  Keep in mind, disease does not exist in heaven.  So whether here or there, you are destined to see disease, pain and death no more.  And what happens to the desire to see a sign now?  You lose the selfishness part of that.  Instead of asking for goodies for yourself, you have no thought of yourself.  But you are swamped with thoughts of others.  You want to BE a sign for someone else, help them, meet their need if you can, no matter how you are feeling at the time.  And where you are powerless to meet their need, you do ask God for the impossible.  Not as a condition of belief, but because you are SURE He can, and will do what is right for that person’s eternal interest.  Where it comes to the removal of sin, 100% guarantee He wants that.  Where it comes to all the other worldly stuff, His gifts must fall in line with our salvation.  Knowing He longs to give them, and knowing He must hold them back, if they would add to our downfall.

Life, instead of existence, is a very tangible, and personal thing.  No one else can define it for you.  No one else can deny the impossible you are witness to in your heart and life.  For you know what is true for you.  You see what God does in your life.  What you suffer from in the eyes of others matters not.  Whether you are burdened with wealth, sickness, persecution – those do not represent the favor or curse of God.  They represent the danger of evil in this world, and are used by Satan to try to get people to believe in a Santa Clause image of God doling out rewards and punishments.  But for the one who truly believes, and chooses to truly trust, the curtain is pulled back – and the impossible is revealed every day no matter what our circumstances or positions may be.  Certainty has never been the goal.  Trust in spite of not knowing has always been it.  That kind of trust prevents the next Satan in the world to come.  And creates a new creature of you in the world we live in today.

 

The Price of Devotion ...

The one thing all of us hold on to with everything we have is our life.  We do not look forward to death and try to postpone that eventuality as long as possible.  It is human nature.  It is the nature of life itself.  Life was meant to be lived.  It was meant to be eternal.  But the embrace of sin introduced pain, and eventually death.  Things God did not intend for us; knowledge we were never supposed to know.  Pain and death were supposed to be mysterious concepts we might discuss in perfection, having no idea what they meant, but trying to guess at them.  Instead, humanity has a first-hand knowledge of both pain and death.  And mortality itself drives us to postpone our eventualities as long as possible.  The irony in all of this, is that when pain or death overtake us, we have the nerve to call these tragedies “the will of God” (that would be the definition of fake news).  It is as if we stole those words of blaming God from the mouth of Satan himself.  It is not God to blame for any of this.  We shoulder that blame.  Nor is it His will that any should suffer or die, it is sin that introduces those eventualities; the diseases that come, the wars that are fought, the acts of violence and accident that take lives and limbs.  None of it, the will of God.  All of it, God must stomach like the rest of us, for sin cannot be driven away through edict, or free-will would be swept away with it.

But when we discuss life and death, we should examine the word “life” as much as we discuss death.  Is it “life” when pain still exists?  Or is that really just existence?  Think of the life of someone who has been abused so horrifically they have lost their mental faculties, and now repeat things without reason, act in ways that are self-destructive, and find themselves lost, homeless, and unable to understand what you are saying to them or trying to do for them.  Add the self poisoning of drugs and chemical destruction to the mix.  Can we still call living in this kind of depraved condition, a real life, or is this just some form of existence?  God does not will this.  God has something else in mind, so great, this poor and afflicted person could not comprehend it even for a moment.  We can hardly imagine it.  How could a mind so degraded begin to understand it?  We would look with extreme pity on such a soul.  We would ask ourselves how we could help, and come away only sharing simple human kindness, and praying for intervention against the sin and Satan of this world.

The poor and depraved, and mentally degraded person I describe, is not some random homeless on the street; it is you, and it is me.  We are homeless as this world the way it is, is NOT our home.  We wander through a wasteland cursed by our own sin.  We have no idea what our real home is going to look like, and why the greatest mansion on earth today is a poo-poo hill, next to what the smallest shack in heaven will look like.  But we don’t know that world, so we begin to value the poo we have, while angels hold their noses and wonder how this is possible.  And we have been abused by the nature of our sinful choices.  We develop habits, repeating things over and over that do not make any sense, and work to our own self harm.  Yet we seem powerless to stop this self-destructive behavior.  We go around muttering things like “we have to look out for number one”, and other slogans of self-empowerment, when the pursuit of happiness only leads us further into misery.  We are diseased.  We are afflicted with genetic degradation that makes us incapable of understanding what perfection and eternity really look like.  It is the core of who we are, our characters, that are so engrained in these diseases, that there is only one cure for them – to die – and to be reborn, or re-created by Jesus Christ.

But as our mortality drives us to postpone physical death; our engrained characters are none too happy to die either.  We may understand that what Jesus will re-create in us might be great; but we are comfortable with who we are now, and unsure, or unwilling to let that go.  So what is the true price of devotion to Christ?  Is it willingness to let who we are go, and to be reborn?  Perhaps this is what it means to die to self.  Peter thought he was ready for it.  He wasn’t.  Matthew tells the story of their shame in chapter 26 of his gospel picking up in verse 31 saying … “Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.”  Yikes.  Each and every one of the disciples, the followers of Christ, the devoted ones – were to be “offended” by Jesus Christ that night.  Shocked by His actions (or rather inaction) in the face of death.  Unable to understand that death must come, in order for rebirth to occur.  Or perhaps like us, unwilling to let our understanding go, in favor of accepting an understanding only He can give us.

But Jesus was not done with His prophesying.  Jesus continues in verse 32 saying … “But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.”  Death was coming.  There was no way to avoid it.  Because of sin, death became an eventuality, even for Jesus – especially for Jesus – in order that life might come for us.  A return to the meaning of life as God intended it.  Not just existence, but life.  A removal of the fog of our diseased thinking, and an instillation of the clarity of His thinking in its place.  Prior to transformation this is very hard to understand.  But our God does give each of us a glimpse through the fog, enough that we are free enough, to make this choice without the burden of our sin weighing down the outcome.  We are given the freedom of mind to choose His love, or to reject it.  But make no mistake, without the intervention of our God to bring us up to parity to choose; sin would rob us of our free-will and make deranged slaves of us all.  It is the outcome many choose in spite of a moment’s clarity to choose Jesus.  The price of our devotion to Christ may lead to our death.  But the price of rejecting His love only buries us in an existence of pain, while doing nothing to avoid the death that will one day take us all.

And as for the death of “who” we are.  This is a death we should long for.  It is the trading of deranged existence for the restoration of what a real life means.  Your diseased mind cannot comprehend it while it remains diseased.  You need the power of His transformation of who you are, to free your thinking, so that you can begin to see the difference between existence and life, between fake happiness, and deep personal joy, that none can take away.  It is as Jesus foretold, He would die, but would NOT stay in the grave.  He would “go before” them into Galilee, only a first of many encounters we would all have with a risen Lord.  It is important to understand Jesus as our creator, because as our creator, He is able to recreate a real life in us.  Once we allow Him to make that change, the path to real understanding begins.  It may not be instantaneous, but it is certain.  It begins with letting go.  Letting go of the “life” we think we have built.  And accepting that His offer gives us “life” we could not have even imagined before.  It is trading the fake wealth of this world, for the poo it really was, and finding the real treasure of this world, in the hearts of others.

But Peter saw none of this.  He had yet to be transformed.  He had yet to allow it.  So he answered in verse 33 saying … “Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.”  Peter said in effect, even if all these other bums are offended, I won’t be, cause I am special.  Here is where pride took over reason.  Pride a symptom of original sin and capable of making us blind to what is truly important.  Only moments before in the last supper Jesus told them one of them was going to betray Him, and ALL of them, including Peter, was forced to ask, “is it me”.  Now having seemed to escape that prophecy we run head long into opposing the words of Christ, for nothing more than our ego.  While at the same time, essentially saying, I am greater than these other guys, even if “they” fall, I WILL NOT.  And how many times have you gotten up from your sin, begging the Lord for forgiveness you do not deserve, and then make the empty promise that “YOU” will not sin anymore.  A promise history will demonstrate YOU have broken, every single time.

It is not His forgiveness that is broken, it is your ability to keep any promise you make.  Stop it.  Quit making the presumption of arrogance that you are able to choose to sin no more.  Instead, in humility accept that only Jesus can take the desire of sin from you in the first place.  It is the victory of Jesus in you, that can remove your sin, NOT what you do or don’t do.  It is what Jesus does.  You need only to get out of the way, and let yourself slip away, let Him decide “who” you are to be.  Let your sinful desires die in the hands of Christ, and let your new desires be reborn or re-created.  Peter has decided here, in error, that Peter will decide what Peter will do in the future.  And Peter will not be offended no matter what the Savior of the world has just said.  Imagine the arrogance of such a statement, in defiance of what Jesus has said.  Instead of this proclamation of false victory Peter was sure to experience.  He might of said, “Lord forgive me”, and take this thing from me.  But alas, reason is blinded by the disease of pride.

Jesus responds in verse 34 saying … “Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.”  Peter thought his devotion to Christ was beyond question.  It was not.  While Peter clung to the ideas of “who” he was, he allowed sin a foothold in him, that led to this unfortunate series of events.  The real price of absolute devotion to Christ, is to put our lives in His hands, no matter what happens to our lives.  But by far, NOT just our physical lives – rather more importantly, the lives we think we have built – the core of who we are – our characters.  Letting our character die in the hands of Christ, letting all sin go, not just some of it, or part of it, but all of it – even if that means I will not recognize who I am anymore.  That is rather the point.  The point is to not recognize who you are anymore, because the new version of you that Jesus creates will be so enormously better.  And the current you cannot understand that, until it is willing to let go, to die, and to be reborn for real.

But Trump and Peter have more in common than we might have first thought.  Matthew continues with Peter’s response in verse 35 saying … “Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples.”  Peter doubled down.  If Trump could only read these passages, how much better might his presidency be.  But alas Peter doubled down, because his pride was now in question, and pride blinds us to reason.  Instead of being humbled by this further pronouncement of Jesus, Peter decides to argue with it again, and this time to raise the stakes.  Peter is now pledging his physical life, long before he has allowed Jesus to remake him fully.  How can you promise to sacrifice your physical life, if you have been unwilling to sacrifice even the life of your character which does not require you to physically die to do it?  You make promises against human nature, despite being aligned with human nature.  Only the transformed heart understands the true nature of “life” and could ever be comfortable with sacrificing it here, to preserve it in the world to come.  The death of “what” we are, is not what our Lord asks, He asks for the death of “who” we are.

And as I imagine what must happen in Trump’s cabinet when he makes a decision, the others follow suit, also proclaiming that they support this very same idea.  The other disciples also pledge upon pain of death, that they too, will not be offended.  None of them broken as yet, but all of them heading towards that end.  For their own pride’s have arisen in them to blind them to humility, and to walk a different road.  What might it have been like if instead of this outrageous mumbling against the Word of the Lord, they might have dropped to the feet of Jesus and begged forgiveness for this thing, begging to have it taken from them as ONLY Jesus could do.  To be wiling to have no pride, to be willing to embrace humility in front of those you love, and those you don’t.  That is the mark of a transformed heart, and the evidence of what true devotion might look like.  But Matthew condemns himself in his own writings, that he too, was unwilling to submit, but rather when it counted the most, stood against our Lord and His counsel.

So many of us modern Christians claim devotion to Christ.  But that devotion is built upon our own ideas of what devotion means.  We are like our disciple forefather before their transformations.  We are devoted when it is convenient.  When we sacrifice for the cause, we see it as sacrifice, not as opportunity to serve.  When asked if we would give our lives for Christ, we say with pride “yes”.  But the life we mean is our physical life, as the life of our character has yet to be put upon His altar.  We have not allowed Jesus to change who we are yet; and despite this, we pledge to give Him what we are.  Some of us have mild experiences with Jesus, perhaps the removal of one sin, or impact in one problem area.  Yet despite the example of how it works, we keep plugging along fighting our sins ourselves, declaring our promises not to do it again.  And finding ourselves on our knees after we fail just one more time.  And then again.  And again.  Until our sins are beyond counting.

It is our promises that need to die.  It is our certainty we should let go.  Instead, we should turn to Jesus and in humility, ask Him to take this thing from us.  And watch what He does, when you get out of the way.  Jesus did not come, so that your personal knowledge of sin, pain, and death, would remain eventualities for you.  He came to change your paradigm.  He came to disrupt who you are.  He came to take from you, the disease that keeps you mired in pathetic existence; and instead offer you life, and life more abundantly.  The price of devotion is no “price” at all, when transformation is what you experience.  You may not see it clearly yet, but you can, you will, you need only go to Jesus in humility and ask, Lord forgive me, take this thing from me, and then sit back, let go, and watch what happens.  Become witness in your own testimony to what Jesus does for you.  Afterwards you will understand, what for now, your mind may not comprehend.  But it can begin here, begin now, and you can finally see what life looks like.

 

Awesome Symbolism (witness number nineteen) ...

There was an important reason why Jesus referred to Himself as “the Light of the world”.  For without Him, we are all blind.  For those who seek truth in Christ, the miracle of the healing of the man who was born blind can find equal relevance in our own spiritual experiences.  Those of us who believe we do not need to be led to truth, that we already have a good enough grasp on the scriptures, and a superior interpretation of them, find ourselves much like the Pharisees who preceded us.  At the end of John’s gospel account chapter nine beginning in verse 39 we find Christ speaking to those who were a witness to the faith of the recently healed blind man in the divinity of Christ.  Jesus says to those there … “And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.”  Those of us who “think” we see fine, are to discover we are truly blind.  Those of us who realize we cannot see anything until Jesus shows it to us, are to discover we will finally be made to see.  We are made blind by our arrogance and pride, even if that is founded in our ideas about scripture.  We are made to see, when we are willing to forsake our own wisdom and begin to trust in His.

This was the contrast of the formerly blind man standing before Jesus, and the Pharisees who refused to see the Light of Christ.  They respond in verse 40 … “And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also?”  This was a rhetorical question in their minds, for from their perspective, no one had a better grasp on scripture or the law than themselves.  They did not anticipate His answer in verse 41 … “Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.”  It was NOT the lack of knowledge that caused the Pharisees to remain in their sin.  It was their arrogance in assuming they needed no help with their sin from Christ.  In effect, the Pharisees were comfortable with the idea, that the forms and traditions of their worship were enough to save them.  They could basically save themselves.  They needed no help from a Messiah.  The help they were looking for was not of a spiritual variety, it was of a political one.  They yearned for a strong leader who would blaze the trail of freedom from their heathen Roman oppressors.  They did not think of themselves as blind to truth or salvation, instead they thought they knew everything they needed to know about those topics.  Christ could keep his spiritual ideas about reliance solely on Him to Himself.  Now if He had had something to say on ousting the Romans, they would have been all ears.  But our ideas of God, and what we want from Him, are often not what His ideas are, or what He wants for us.  So to clarify the mission of the Messiah, and dispense with the false leaders who had come before and would come again, Christ decides to tell them in story, why He is there.

Jesus begins his sermon in verse 1 of chapter ten of John’s account … Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. [verse 2] But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.”  Soon Jesus would identify Himself as the door.  In these passages Jesus declares, that there is only one way in and out of the sheepfold.  It is THROUGH Christ.  Attempting to gain passage by another route, say, by the strength of our own ideas, or by assuming our own “spirituality” or “goodness” warrants a position in the flock absent Christ for example:  these methods reveal only our own motives.  They do not entitle us to be in the flock, they actually make us dangerous to others who are there.  Those who enter by the strength of Christ are those who “should” be in the number.

Jesus continues in verse 3 … “To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. [verse 4] And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. [verse 5] And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.”  Jesus tries to show the difference between Himself and those others who might “claim” to be the Messiah.  Those who seek truth, find it in Jesus.  They realize the only way their tattered lives can ever be remade is through the power of Christ.  As such, they only want Jesus to be their shepherd, because they have found relief in no other way, including in trusting their own abilities.  Thus they crave the voice of Jesus to lead them.  When others come and try to get these sheep to follow, the sheep realize there is no truth in those voices, there is no redemption in them, and they wish only to follow Christ.  Here Christ is trying hard to reveal to those there that He is THE method of their salvation.

And why choose sheep to represent us?  A sheep is not a fierce some creature.  They are not particularly bright.  They make mistakes, get lost, and would starve if not taken care of.  They are easy prey for wolves.  From the perspective of the wolf, it is easy to count sheep.  To those Christians who believe it is their right, and their duty, to defend themselves against the enemy, even if those means include weapons and deadly force; I ask, are you the sheep, or the wolf?   We were not meant to combat Satan.  We are outmatched.  It is no contest.  It is ONLY our Shepherd who can defeat our enemy.  It is our trust in Him that sees us delivered.  It is not our making or gathering of new sheep weapons that will save the day for us.  Wolves will always defeat sheep if there is no shepherd around to save them.  This is how evil works, in nature, and in us spiritually.  Our enemy is superior to us, yet tells us, if we just work hard enough, we can defeat him.  He tries to get the sheep to think they are strong enough, tough enough, and determined enough to defeat the wolf by their sheer power of will.  In this is the perversion of the gospel – that we only need Christ to forgive us when we err, not save us from the erring.  Satan’s entire system of deception is to get us to take our eyes and focus away from Jesus and put it on ourselves.  This is how the Pharisees were blinded to Christ.  They chose to trust in their own understanding and not be humbled before God.

John notes in verse 6, that the audience there did not understand what Christ was saying.  I would venture because our first response to being referred to as sheep is not a pleasant one.  If we are going to be associated with animals we prefer a much more majestic or fierce creature.  But sheep?  Ouch.  So Jesus must try to explain again, He continues in verse 7 … “Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. [verse 8] All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. [verse 9] I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”  It is only by Christ that we are provided for, both physically and spiritually.  We are fed, both our daily bread, and our daily spiritual growth, by following only Christ.  It is only THROUGH Christ that we can enter safely, and remain safely in the flock without being a danger to the others there.

Imagine for a minute what heaven would be like to a rapist who had never been reformed.  All around him are the most beautiful women, perfect in every way.  All of them are loving, caring, attentive, and eager to serve.  None of them pose a threat, none are violent, none have weapons of self-defense or need of them.  How hard it would be for the wolf to roam the streets of heaven being tempted to defile every single woman he comes across.  Wondering if he could do these acts of violence in secret, or in darkness, and remain undiscovered; fearing that God might see him and cast him out.  Heaven would not be heaven for such a man; it would literally be a place of torture.  Forbidden fruit all around him, intense desire to dominate, but no ability to execute and remain undiscovered for it; this is the situation non-Christ centered religions and ideologies would have you accept.  Those who do not accept that it is Christ who remakes the rapist into a new creature who no longer wishes to ever hurt another again, and wishes now only to serve and love all; offer no way to achieve this transformation other than the power of their corrupted minds and will.  Muslins believe that God forgives.  But they offer no method of transformation outside of the will of man.  Eastern religions teach that enlightenment is achieved through introspection, not through submission to Christ.  Atheism would have us believe that our instinctive desire to preserve our social order could one day result in a lessening of violence despite all the facts that point to the contrary.  And even some Christians, cling to the ideas that they need not submit to Christ to be remade, they can do it for themselves.  But for the rapist who knows he cannot change himself, there is only one who can.  The point of the story of Christ, is the recognition of this need.

Then Jesus says something truly stunning as in verse 10 He continues … “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”  The unreformed lead a tortured existence of pain and death.  They cannot help but to wish to please self.  If this means they must steal to do it, then so be it.  How often have you taken something, perhaps even something very small, that did not belong to you?  How many rationalizations do you make to “justify” your appropriation?  We remove a pen from the bank and say to ourselves, they are rich and can easily replace a pen.  Or if it is from an employer, we just say to ourselves that this is simply part of our compensation for working so hard.  After all, the bank and our employers wish us to write things down that they will use for their benefit. 

Or perhaps it is simply how we fill out our timesheets, adding a few minutes here and there, or rounding things up just a bit to make a little extra – rationalizing that we work harder than those around us in the same amount of time and therefore “deserve” a bit more than they do.  We get to a point, where we stop thinking about what we take, as being a theft at all.  It is simply normal behavior for us, the right and wrong of it, have long been decided in our favor.  If evil only stopped at thievery perhaps it would not be so bad.  But evil does not stop at this kind of rationalization.  It is degenerative.  What I steal today, I must protect tomorrow.  If that requires killing, so be it.  If I cannot have it, then nobody can, if I must destroy a good thing to keep others from enjoying it, then so be it.  And thus evil reveals itself as nothing but pain and death, a tortured existence that is not truly worth living, and would not be wanted if sentenced to be lived out in immortality in this condition.

But contrast the nature of evil, with the desires and mission of Christ where He says … “I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.”  He is here to make HOW we live, something more than it is today.  A life in Christ is a life worth living.  It is a life that does not cause pain to others or to me.  It is a life that lived out in immortality would be worth living.  And this is NOT just a future promise.  It is an IMMEDIATE one.  Our lives can be made different today as we submit them to Jesus to be remade.  The whole goal of God was eliminate the pain and death that comes from evil from within us.  The pain we cause when we learn to steal and not even regard it as stealing, is something we do not need to suffer from for yet another day.  It is something we can bring to Jesus and leave in His hands to be reformed.  We do not need to struggle every day pitting our knowledge of good and evil against our inherent nature and desire to choose evil.  We need only submit to Christ, our desires, our will, and our decisions, and allow Him to change HOW we think, WHAT we want, and then what we do will follow.  This is the Life that Christ longs to introduce to us.  He longs to offer us a different life.  Here and now, not just in a place we call heaven; this offer was meant to be taken up on today.  We can be something more.  We can be someone different than who we were.  We can be new creatures, if we but let Christ re-create us as He wishes.  What a precious promise and reason for His visit to our world.  He comes to offer us Life, a real life, not this thing we have grown accustomed to, but something entirely different, new and wonderful.  This is the entire mission of the Messiah.

Jesus continues in verse 11 … “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”  He is trying to warn those who hear Him there, that there will be a personal cost to Him, to achieve our redemption.  He must die, taking our place, in order that the punishment of death we have embraced is met on our behalf.  He does this willingly.  This is how far Love will go, to save the object of its affection.  This is the contrast between God and what it means to love others more than self; and Satan who demonstrates where loving self first will lead.  God, who is love, and has done nothing but love us, will now go so far as to take on the punishment we deserve, so that we will not suffer it.  Forgiveness itself is an act of love in the face of evil.  We do not deserve forgiveness we deserve punishment and retribution for the pain we cause to others and ourselves, but forgiveness offers us no punishment, it is love in the face of our evil.  This is the contrast between the nature of Love and the nature of evil.  Evil would demand evil for actions it does not enjoy.  Love offers love even to those who have never earned it and will never deserve it.

As for these other pretender Messiah’s who may come answering the desire of the people to be redeemed of Rome, but offering no way of real redemption Jesus continues in verse 12 … “But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. [verse 13] The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.”  The Messiah the Pharisees were looking for could never be the true one sent from God.  For at the end of the day, those who seek self first, seek to preserve self at all costs.  Political leaders have no problem having others die for their cause.  They have no problem keeping themselves alive, even if others must die for them to do so.  The contrast of those who seek only power, and He who seeks only to offer us life are so outlined.  He would lay down His life for us.  Those other pretenders would be only all too happy to avoid even the risk of losing their own lives, and if we lose ours, so be it.

Jesus repeats his mission in verse 14 … “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. [verse 15] As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.”  He again states that despite what reputation the devil would have us believe about God the Father, it is God the Father who works in concert with Christ for our redemption and restoration.  This is a mission of ALL of the Godhead.  Our Father God is every bit as interested in our redemption as is our Creator God His Son Jesus Christ.  It is not the revelation of Jesus that all of the sudden changes the mind of God His Father about our redemption.  It is the revelation of Jesus that shows us that our redemption was ALWAYS the first concern of His Father God and Himself.  Every story in scripture, even every story in the Old Testament that we may not fully understand, was designed to show us the redemptive desire of our God, not the image of a righteous punisher in chief.  Here is Christ on earth, stating personally what He knows to be true, because He has heard it first hand from the mouth of His Father, in conversation between them we would never know.  This is Jesus definitively stating that His Father is consumed with our redemption and restoration.  They work as one in this.

Then in verse 16 come perhaps the most beautiful words in the New Testament for me personally, as I am not of Jewish decent, or was present at the time of this sermon.  Jesus continues … “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”  Praise God, the mission of the Messiah was not just confined to the people He stood before on that day.  The mission was greater than for just those of Jewish decent, and was greater than for just those who share my particular doctrinal interpretations and values.  His mission was to redeem and restore the world.  Jesus Christ would be the uniting method of ALL of our salvation.  There is nothing to separate us from our home with Christ, except our stubborn determination to reject the re-creation and new life He offers us.  “One fold” not many.  “One home” with Christ, not several.  We are One family united in Christ, for only through Christ might we become the new creations He intends.  It is not our interpretation of scripture that unites us, but instead the method of our salvation.  “One Shepherd” not many.  “One Shepherd” not his surrogates.  We are not to follow other followers of Christ, but to follow only the One Shepherd Himself.  We do not find truth in each other; we find it alone in Jesus.  We can reflect the love of Christ to each other as we allow Him to teach us how to love.  But this does not mean that the source of truth moves from Christ to His followers who have learned how to love.  The source remains the source, it will always be Jesus.

It is fine to notice and admire the sacrifice that some of the great followers of Jesus have made to attempt to promote His love and His faith.  But these patriarchs from Adam, to Noah, to Moses, to David, to Peter, to Martin Luther, to Billy Graham, to your local pastor or spiritual teacher – all may have made contributions to the kingdom, but none are to be your shepherd.  For there can be only one true Shepherd as there is only One fold or home of His children.  We are ALL to find our salvation, our redemption, our re-creation, only in the person of Jesus Christ.  It is our distinct privilege that John recorded these words, that the Lord preserved them, that we have a Bible in which we can find them, and take them into our hearts.  For it is “we” who are those sheep of another fold; it is “we” who are to be included in His great number.  No matter where we were born, or when, or how we have been taught, salvation and life itself are ours for the taking through the gift of Jesus Christ.  It is not even our pain and past that keeps Jesus away from us, He longs only to take away our pain, and give us a real life in its place.  This text is a singular promise upon which we can have hope.  For out of the mouth of God, came the words directed at you, that you too, are to be saved under Christ.

Then Jesus states to the crowd the difference between Himself, the true Messiah, and those who would claim that title as well in verse 17 … “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. [verse 18] No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.”  Only Christ could both lay down His own life, and take it up again.  Think of it, He was going to die, but here He states none of us could actually kill Him.  He must lay down His own life.  He must give it up Himself, a free will offering, a free will gesture, in order for us to be redeemed.  Only God the Father could give Jesus the power to both lay down His life, and having done so, to take it up again.  Others could come claiming to be the Messiah, some might even be willing to die for their cause.  But none of the pretenders could ever call themselves out of their own graves back to life again.  Only the Son of God could do this, because only He had received this commandment or ability from His Father; again showing the unity of Father and Son in our work of redemption.

The response of the Pharisees in attendance was only a continued blindness.  They knew the reality of our mortality.  They knew that no-one had ever come back from the dead to life again.  So for Jesus to claim that this was something He alone could do, was just crazy talk to them.  In verse 19 they responded … “There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. [verse 20] And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? [verse 21] Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?”  The problem the Pharisees faced were not as much the words of Christ, as the deeds of Christ.  Jesus had made the blind man to see again, an act of love the devil had never performed.  This miracle stood in the face of their ideas.  It substantiated a connection between Christ and God.  At the very least, it made Christ a prophet in the traditional sense.  But any connection to God, removed the power of the Pharisees over their religious flock, and they meant to hold the role of shepherd for themselves.  Do we offer the same response?

When Christ speaks to us that we cannot save ourselves; that we must submit our will to Him, not just to fight harder not to sin on our own – do we call it crazy talk?  After all, my nature is to express my sin, in whatever form it takes.  The only reason why I do not sin more often than I do today, is because of the small measure of self-control I exert over it right?  You are asking me to give up fighting.  If I do that, I will go hog-wild on the sin thing without any restraint.  Because, really, what is going to stop me, if I give up trying to stop myself?  But Jesus asks us to trust Him, in spite of what we know about ourselves.  He is not offering us an excuse to sin more; He is offering us a way to sin NO more.  Submitting our desires to Him, allows Him to remake the things we want.  When we want something else, we pursue that thing, not the old thing we used to want, and perhaps find we no longer want.  When we submit our decisions to Him, we give Him the freedom to make other choices on our behalf.  Doors open and close and we simply walk through them, instead of trying to pry ones open that should be closed, or slam the ones that we were supposed to be entering in.  When we submit our will to Christ, we acknowledge that He alone can remake the “who” of who we are into what He intends instead of what we have done with it.  We begin to think differently.  We begin to see truth.  We begin to understand.  And most importantly, we find we are no longer sinning that old sin, and cannot explain why, because we did nothing to see it removed – Christ did.   Is this just crazy talk, or does it work?  Christ says it does, how will you respond?

 

Nobility and Humility (witness number seven) ...

There are many things that appeal to us about the idea of living a life with great wealth.  With wealth, comes a better education.  With wealth, comes the potential to eat better foods, and enjoy a diet with far greater variety.  With wealth, comes a certain presumption that our children will be provided for, and perhaps have an even better life than the one we live.  A nobleman in the time of Christ, would have known all these things, or rather should have known all these things.  But then as now, the pain of evil that our world has embraced, the sickness and decay of death that was introduced when Eve bit in to that forbidden fruit, knows no respecter of persons.  The poor may die more quickly, and perhaps suffer more along the way.  But the rich die too, sometimes just as harshly, sometimes for just as unexplainable reasons.  Death itself was never the intent of God.  Nor was His intent to see suffering and sickness in the world.  Sickness and death were never the will of God.  They are our reality, because once the opposite of life is embraced, the only other path is pain and death.  What Christ came into this world to demonstrate, was what a restoration to life could free us from – both pain and death.

And so in the gospel of John, in chapter four and verse 46 we find that after His encounter with the Samaritans, Jesus had come into Cana in Galilee near where He had made the water into wine at the wedding He recently attended.  By this point, the fame and news of Jesus and where He went was becoming the top story of the communities there.  It was not just what Jesus did, though He had already done some miraculous things, it was also what Jesus said.  His teachings were revolutionary.  His teachings were new, they were fresh; they caused His hearers to examine their motives and desires, even more than their actions.  With hearing this news, a certain Nobleman whose son was sick at home in Capernaum, decided to seek Jesus out and plead for the health of his son.

You can bet the most prized possession of any Jewish nobleman would have been his son.  Having a male inheritor was an extremely important part of Jewish society and culture.  And being a man of wealth, I am certain when his son first became ill, he would have received the finest medical attention money could buy.  Every expert in the region would have been sought after to heal an ailing nobleman’s son.  But then as it is now, sometimes there is just nothing medical skills are able to do, against a determined illness.  Things were getting desperate.  This was serious.  It was approaching life and death.  Against this backdrop, the father chooses to leave the side of his son, even though his son is knocking on death’s door, and could well die without his father with him.  But the father is not ready to yield his son to death just yet.  The nobleman knows of Jesus, and has hope Jesus might be able to cure his son.  Yet as later texts reveal, the nobleman does not believe Jesus is the Messiah.  Only that he might be able to help his son.  He has heard stories, but he has not witnessed them himself.  Still, if there is any hope, to Jesus he will travel.

In verse 47 we find … “he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son: for he was at the point of death.”  The noble father knew the stakes; the noble father knew that were no other options left.  He knew that only a miracle could now save his son, and so he wanted to see one.  In verse 48 Jesus responds … “Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.”  Obviously this was not a statement about the belief the nobleman had in the ability of Jesus to heal his son.  He would not have left the side of his dying son if he did not think Christ could heal him, or if he had had any other option.  However, despite his desire for a miracle, he was not quite willing to accept the idea that Christ was the Messiah, the true Son of God.  It was this belief, that Christ was referring to.  Christ wanted to save more than the illness of the nobleman’s son, He wanted to save the souls of father and son.  In addition, His words were for a broader audience.

There are those in our world, who refuse to accept the idea that God exists.  They cite a lack of empirical evidence.  In short, they have not seen a miracle, therefore they refuse to accept that any sort of divinity could exist that could do one.  They choose rather to believe in themselves, and in what they know, and in what they have seen.  Of course, no one has ever personally witnessed the transformation from reptilian dinosaur into mammalian modern man either; but there is a theory based on limited changes we can witness that has been postulated (and given the lack of creation); it must have taken place that way.  So they are willing accept that idea having never witnessed it, rather than accepting the improbability that divinity could have simply willed it.  Without personally witnessing a divine miracle that they would have no other choice but accept; they will not believe.  This is more of a problem than you might at first imagine.

Evil entered our universe, because when confronted with the unknown, Lucifer chose to trust himself, and his own ideas about where pursuing the idea of pleasing self might take him, rather than where God told him it would lead.  In short, when confronting what we do not understand, choosing to trust in ourselves rather than in God, is how evil came into existence.  This is a mistake that cannot be repeated.  In order for evil to never rise again, the universe must come to a place where it trusts in God, more than it trusts in itself, and in our own wisdom.  Witnessing a miracle, would never be sufficient proof to turn someone determined not to believe, into a believer.  The “miracle” would simply be explained away, as some sort of trickery, random luck, or self-delusion.  When one is determined not to believe in something, one will always find a “legitimate” reason not to believe.  It is the determination itself that presents the problem. 

The nobleman had heard the stories, but not witnessed them.  The stories told more than simply of Jesus the miracle worker, they told of Jesus the Messiah and Son of God.  The fact that he was in front of Jesus to plead for the life of his son, reveals that he believed at least in that much.  But without personally seeing these miracles, he was unwilling to take it a step farther and believe in the soul saving work the Messiah had entered our world to complete.  But pride in our own ideas, is often humbled as we realize how little we control.  When circumstances take away our perceptions and put our wisdom to folly, sometimes then we are willing to let go our own ideas about how things “should” work and reach out for something more.  Illness had come to the door of the nobleman and had taken the most prized possession in his home, his son.  Medical skills had been unable to do anything about it.  Science had failed.  Reason had been strained.  Pride at this point, was all but dead.  Now, only the life of his son mattered.  Now, no matter what, he was willing to put aside his own ideas and reach out for something beyond himself.  And so he responds in verse 49 saying … “The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die.”  This was last ditch effort of the nobleman saying please.  This was the nobleman admitting there were no other options.  It would be Christ, or death.

The conclusion the nobleman had reached about the life of his son, was the same conclusion each of us must reach about our own lives.  It would be Christ, or death.  If we are to continue to trust in our own wisdom, even as it relates to salvation and the interpretation of scripture, we are doomed to fail.  It is not our wisdom that saves us, only Christ.  It is not our ideas about truth that save us, only Christ.  There is nothing about us, that saves us, only Christ.  In short, it will be Christ, or death.  When we realize this, we can offer up our minds to Christ, as well as our hearts.  When we allow Him to teach us without bringing in to it, our own preconceptions, and misplaced interpretations, we can finally find what He has been trying to say to us all along.  It is our own ideas that blind us to His truth.  It is our own clinging to trust what we know, instead of what He knows, that keeps us poor, and blind, and naked.  It is our trust in self, that is at the core of how evil was introduced into the universe, and what must be altered in us if evil is ever to fully and finally be exterminated.  It will forever remain, that life will be found only in Christ and His wisdom, or in the alternative, death.  There is no other reality, no other choice.  In his desperation to save his son, the nobleman had reached this point.

Jesus responds in verse 50 … “Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth.”  At this point, the battle for the salvation of the nobleman, and his son, had already been won.  When pride had been killed, belief could be born.  It would take the death of pride in himself, to allow for the birth of belief in something greater than himself.  The nobleman had reached this point.  Have you?  Are we so disgusted with our repeated failures, and persistent embrace of sin and pain, that we are finally ready to cast aside the pride in our own ideas about salvation, and truly seek salvation from outside of ourselves, in Jesus Christ alone?  The nobleman was, and he would find it.  When our pride is killed, we will find it as well.

Verse 50 continues … “And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.”  This is a powerful verse of scripture.  The nobleman had still “seen” nothing, yet he believed.  When his pride was killed, he no longer needed to “see” the miracles for himself, he was now willing to accept the words of Christ as facts.  He was not returning to his home in order to be with his son before he would die.  He was returning in anticipation of finding his son alive.  But more than that, his belief had transcended the idea of Jesus the miracle worker, to Jesus the Messiah and true Son of God.  And as he returns home, like in the parable of the prodigal son, his servants are already running out to meet him.  They cannot simply wait at home, for him to return, but must share the good news with the nobleman.  A transformed life cannot be silent, it must testify as to the good news it has witnessed.

Upon learning of the time when the healing had begun, the nobleman knew it was at the same time Jesus had told him to return home that his son would live.  And the greater goal of Jesus in the sharing of the nobleman’s experience would be achieved.  The scripture records in verse 53 … “and himself believed, and his whole house.”  Salvation in the life altering Son of God, was not just instilled in the nobleman and his son, but in his servants, and family, and everyone in the home.  The life giving transformational encounter with Christ had done more than cure illness; it had liberated the nobleman from the slavery of trusting in self, to the freedom that comes from trusting in Christ.  Desperation had given birth to belief that can and did save.  It was and is belief in Christ that saves us, and sees us find life eternal.  When we trust in God, more than in ourselves, we find evil vanquished unable to face Him.  This is how evil will finally and fully be extinguished in the universe.  For forevermore, we will always trust in God, more than we trust in ourselves, and that alone will keep evil dead forever.  Salvation and life begin, when we let go our pride, and look only to Christ.