(This teaching is a part of a series called Because of You, the purpose of which is to address areas of hypocrisy common in the church of our nation. If you have not read the previous entry, you can find it here.)
Will a Man Rob God?
Now that we have laid the groundwork, let us examine the hypocrisies that Paul specifically picks out in Romans 2. His list is not exhaustive, but it is a fantastic place for us to start. These forms of hypocrisy are as alive in the church today as they were when Paul wrote about them two thousand years ago, and it behooves us to address first the areas that the apostle deemed most in need of his readers’ attention.
You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? Romans 2:21
Is the church stealing? Perhaps not when you take a cursory glance according to the world’s definition of theft, but how does the church measure up against the Kingdom’s definition of theft?
“Will a man rob God?
Yet you have robbed Me!
But you say,
‘In what way have we robbed You?’
In tithes and offerings.
You are cursed with a curse,
For you have robbed Me,
Even this whole nation.
Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the Lord of hosts,
“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven
And pour out for you such blessing
That there will not be room enough to receive it.
“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes,
So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground,
Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,”
Says the Lord of hosts;
“And all nations will call you blessed,
For you will be a delightful land,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
Malachi 3:8-12
According to this scripture, stealing is not just taking what isn't yours. It also includes withholding what ought to be given.
Then, God rebuked the priesthood for their stingy offerings. Today, the fear of lack and mindsets that deny God’s provision have led to us storing up provisions and gifts like the Israelites tried to store up manna.
Then the children of Israel did so and gathered, some more, some less. So when they measured it by omers, he who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack. Every man had gathered according to each one’s need. And Moses said, “Let no one leave any of it till morning.” Notwithstanding they did not heed Moses. But some of them left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. So they gathered it every morning, every man according to his need. And when the sun became hot, it melted. Exodus 16:17-21
The provision of God is not something to be gathered and stored. This is one area that the church needs to learn to be foolish in the eyes of the world. ‘Save, prepare, be ready,’ says the world. Perhaps there is wisdom in this, but I ask you, is this worldly wisdom or heavenly wisdom? Remember that worldly wisdom is demonic in nature, but heavenly wisdom seems foolish.
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good conduct, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast in it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every evil practice. James 3:13-16
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Corinthians 1:25
Let God examine your heart and reveal to you why you are storing up. Is it in obedience to the Holy Spirit, or in obedience to fear? Fear is selfishness – it is the selfish desire to preserve your own life and security. Perfect love banishes fear (1 John 4:18), so if we act from fear, we know that we are not in love, and thus are in the hand of the enemy.
When fear governs us we store up, hoard, and grasp for more. What does this say to the world about God? It gives them a false message that God only has so much to give, and He only gives to those special religious folks. It does not testify of a generous, caring father with a bottomless bank account. It testifies of a chintzy, fickle, unreliable god and a church that jealously clutches their blessings, expecting they might run out.
But Malachi tells us the truth – that if we give selflessly, there is more where that came from! There is a promise here that if we are faithful to give what we have to the purposes of God, He will guard our prosperity against the enemy and cause our lives to bear fruit. Further, that in-so-doing we will testify of the blessings of God!
Implied in this too is the opposite. That if we refuse to give of what He entrusts to us, then we are on our own against the enemy’s attempts to impoverish us. We return to the curse of Adam, and our provision is by our sweat and labor rather than out of our Father’s infinite wealth. Further, our testimony of blessing will become a testimony of disobedience and poverty.
Don’t misunderstand – I am not preaching a prosperity gospel to you. Giving when God has not asked is equally disobedient to withholding when He does ask.
I am saying that all you have is not yours, but God’s. You are only the manager of it.
If, as a manager, you use what He gives you wisely, He will invite you to manage more. Note that I did not say he will give you more. The ‘more’ is not about enriching you, but stewarding the Kingdom’s resources. I do not promise you that the more you give the more you will get – I am not interested in appealing to your flesh’s desire for wealth and comfort. I promise that when you give obediently, you will have what you need. It may feel tight sometimes, but remember that God can provide for you both by increasing your supply and by reducing your need.
However, if, as a manager, you use what He gives you according to your own purposes and perspectives, you will lose your managerial position. Who would continue to fund a manager who was disobedient and selfish in his management?
Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately. Therefore He said: “A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. So he called ten of his servants, delivered to them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Do business till I come.’ But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We will not have this man to reign over us.’
“And so it was that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. Then came the first, saying, ‘Master, your mina has earned ten minas.’ And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.’ And the second came, saying, ‘Master, your mina has earned five minas.’ Likewise he said to him, ‘You also be over five cities.’
“Then another came, saying, ‘Master, here is your mina, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief. For I feared you, because you are an austere man. You collect what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’ And he said to him, ‘Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow. Why then did you not put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might have collected it with interest?’
“And he said to those who stood by, ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to him who has ten minas.’ (But they said to him, ‘Master, he has ten minas.’) ‘For I say to you, that to everyone who has will be given; and from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.’” Luke 19:11-27
Note that this parable is not about the wealth of the managers, but about what they are given to manage. The minas are not for their own use, but the Master tells them to ‘do business’ until He returns. The faithful managers were not rewarded with personal riches, but responsibility over greater resources. The unfaithful manager, who was driven by fear to store up and thus misunderstood the instructions of the Master, was punished not with personal poverty, but with reduced responsibility.
Consider this parable – a wealthy man met a beggar on the street. The beggar, desperate, offered to work for the wealthy man. Sympathizing with him, the wealthy man decided to give him a chance. He brought the beggar to his home – a great mansion – and said, “be the steward of my home. Keep it well in my absence, and you may live in my halls.”
Overjoyed, the beggar accepted the offer. The wealthy man was rarely at home, and the beggar got the house to himself most of the time. It was almost as if the mansion was his own, for he enjoyed it more than the master! But he kept his eyes on his task, and stewarded the mansion well. Whenever the wealthy man returned, he would knock at the door, and the beggar would open and let him in. During each visit, the wealthy man was pleased with the beggars work, and invited the beggar into new, more luxurious rooms.
However, one day when the wealthy man returned and knocked on the door, it did not open. He knocked again and again, yet still there was no answer. Finally, the voice of the beggar came through the locked door; “Who is knocking at my door?”
“It is I,” the wealthy man said, “the owner of this home and your employer. Let me in!”
“This is my house!” exclaimed the beggar. “Would you deprive me of it?”
“How can you say that? I brought you into my home to manage it for me while I was away. I did not give it to you, but only gave you responsibility over it and tasked you to keep it in my name.”
“But I am here so much more than you, and I enjoy this house much more. I do all the work to keep it, and I am the one who sleeps and spends my days within it. It is in my hands more than it is in yours – sure it is mine.”
The wealthy man went to get the authorities, who promptly threw the beggar out onto the streets, his authority rescinded and once again without a place to live.
Who was unjust – the wealthy man, or the beggar? Surely the beggar! He enjoyed great wealth, but it was never his. By kicking him out, the wealthy man did not impoverish the beggar, just as how by inviting him in, the wealthy man did not enrich the beggar. The beggars own assets never increased or decreased – his authority did, according to his stewardship.
We must understand that when God appears to enrich us, it is not so that our testimony can be, “God made me rich!” People in the world prosper without God all the time. Your testimony is meant to be management of endless resources from God, such that you are not building storehouses but pipelines. Building storehouses is motivated by an expectation of lack. Building pipelines is motivated by an expectation of provision. Your life is not meant to be a receptacle to hold God’s provision – your life is meant to be a riverbed for God’s provision to endlessly flow through.
But instead, people go hungry all around the church and the church does nothing. Worse, the church builds opulent palaces and the men and women of God purchase more cars! This simple hypocrisy is plain for the world to see!
Keep in mind, too, that this is not just about money! Everything God gives you is His, and He has made you a manager over it. Your skills and gifts, your voice, your very life!
Do not let the enemy read these words to you! Am I telling you to make yourself poor? Perhaps – the scripture does say that we are regarded as poor, yet making many rich. (2 Corinthians 6:10) Or perhaps you are called to be like Solomon, and for your wealth to testify of God. In either case, whether you are rich or not in an earthly sense shouldn’t matter to you. It’s not about how much you can hold, it’s about how you spend what you have. The very fact that so many Christians are just waiting for God to make them rich testifies against their faith! We are rich in heaven, no matter what happens on earth. Should we not act like it?
Adultery of the Heart
You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? Romans 2:22
The church should not be participating in sexual immorality.
I’m certainly not the first to say it, but it’s hard not to question how serious believers are about this topic when we see weekly updates on the sex scandals of pastors. These stories show us leaders who, for years, have preached about the evils of pornography and adultery, then gone home and committed sexual immorality.
However, as terrible as this is, it is just the obvious form of this hypocrisy.
Much like with theft, we can’t stop at just understanding sexual immorality and adultery from a worldly perspective.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew 5:27-28
God’s concern on this topic goes beyond what we do to what we think and desire. God asks us, ‘what is behind your eyes?’
It is so easy to believe the enemy when he lies and tells us that nobody can see our private, lecherous thoughts. That they are ‘harmless’ and ‘natural’, something there is ‘no point in battling’ because they are ‘built into our fallen flesh’.
As with all of his lies, there is some covering of truth over the rotten core. Yes, our flesh is fallen, and no, we cannot control what thoughts knock on the door of our mind. But when we accept these lies, we begin to identify with those thoughts. Instead of saying, ‘what is this invader in my heart? Begone, my enemy! You have no place here!’ we say, ‘oh, it’s just my fleshly lust. I’ll just make sure not to let it show, but I can’t stop it from sleeping on my couch.’
You know where that ends. It ends with the news stories we read week by week.
For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Matthew 12:34
For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. James 3:2-5
Scripture tells us that what the heart desires, the tongue speaks, and that what the tongue speaks, the body does. From this, we see a clear line of cause and effect from what we think and believe, to what we speak, then to what we do. The world tries to modify behavior from the outside, but God promises us a new heart, because He knows that is the only way to actually change what we say and do.
James goes so far as to say that if a man can get his words right, then he will be a perfect man and have complete mastery over his body as well! Following that, we must ask how to master the tongue! Christ has told us – by acquiring a new heart.
If we compromise on lust living in our heart, it will guide our eyes, it will corrupt our words, and it will grasp at our bodies.
We avoid looking, peeking, and double-taking, but if this is all we focus on, we have not actually stopped sinning. I fear that we battle with our eyes because these actions can be noticed, but in our private thoughts where ‘nobody sees’, we entertain imaginations and fantasies without challenging them. Are we looking, grasping, and lusting in our inner courts?
We can spend out whole lives with our eyes upturned yet never overcome lust. Further, if we do this, we have excluded people from receiving our ministry. How are you meant to minister to a someone if you cannot look at them?
The root of the issue is not in the eyes, but in the heart.
Do not misunderstand – I do not tell you to give in and look. I tell you that we must go further than not looking and instead contend for the goal of not lusting, so that our gaze can be pure. The issue Jesus highlights in Matthew 5 is not just that someone looks, but that they look to lust. The issue is not the gaze, but what is behind it. If we avert our gaze, but never deal with the lust, we are not fully victorious.
When we avoid stimulation or temptation with nervous fear, it testifies of immaturity. It is fine to be immature, but we must not be satisfied with immaturity. If we cannot handle sexuality in a mature way, then we leave an open door for the enemy to attack us through.
I highlight again that the most common way a minister falls is through sexual immorality. This is an area of particular weakness in the American church. This happens because we have settled for the appearance of purity rather than the fullness of it.
Purity does not end at, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, God!’ The fullness of purity means being above reproach; leaving no angle from which the enemy can lie about you or to you, and no hook for him to pull on.
Purity doesn’t just mean avoiding temptations – it means also overcoming them.
Jesus didn’t just avoid temptations – he ministered directly to prostitutes, yet He never sinned.
Think of the magnitude of that statement. Jesus was not different from us with regards to the temptations He dealt with – He wore the same flesh we do, He knows well the temptations of it. Yet His heart remained so pure that He could minister to prostitutes and never give one so much as a sideways glance. He didn’t have to blindfold Himself to do it, but by the Spirit of God, He remained pure.
Now consider this from the perspective of those prostitutes. These women's’ identities had been defined by lust and sexual sin. Men’s unrestrained desire for them had been the center of their lives. These men would come and pay them in the night, then condemn them during the day. Their profession was their way of surviving, but surely also a source of trauma and pain. They were trained to identify, stimulate, and take advantage of the latent lust within the men around them, then they were vilified and reviled for it.
It is amazing that Jesus, the Messiah, took the time to minister to them, who were seen as some of the most hopelessly lost in all of society at the time. It is also amazing is that they wanted anything to do with Him! These women were no strangers to hypocrites. Knowing the troubles the church has with sexual immorality today, and knowing that the nature of fallen mankind was no different then, we can confidently assume that these prostitutes had been visited by a Pharisee or two. Now this Jesus, this religious Jew, is here to love them purely?
Surely they tested him. Surely they watched his gaze closely. Surely they bent low in front of Him to see what He would do, where He would look, whether there would be desire in His eyes. It’s uncomfortable to imagine Jesus in this kind of situation, but if we push past that we can realize how incredible it is that despite surely being tested in this way, He passed every single time. Not only by avoiding those temptations (Jesus was prudent as well as pure,) but also by overcoming them.
I reiterate to you – it is not only incredible that Jesus spent time with prostitutes and never sinned, it is incredible that the prostitutes wanted anything to do with Him.
And it shows us just how far from His example the church of today is – those prostitutes loved Christ’s words. The prostitutes of today revile the church’s words. If those prostitutes who received Christ’s ministry two thousand years ago had caught a whiff of hypocrisy from Jesus, they wouldn’t have given His words a second thought. Because the church of today reeks of hypocrisy, they want nothing to do with us or our God.
I ask you, how can those who have been hurt by sexual immorality – prostitutes or otherwise – trust a God whose church is mired in that very evil that wounded them? The lack of trust towards the church testifies to our lack of purity.
In Jesus’ time, the sinners and prostitutes gathered around Him while the religious and self-important gathered against Him. In our time, the church curries favor with the religious and self-important while sinners and prostitutes blaspheme the Name because of us.
Polluted Victory
You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? Romans 2:22
We all love to hear testimonies of the church and Christ being victorious over the gods of this age. We rejoice when politics swing our way, or when cultural idols fall. But what are we taking from these victories? When we conquer the temples of the land, what do we carry back into our camp?
We must realize that, like the other hypocrisies we’ve examined, robbing temples isn’t just about physical idols. The church may not be full of statues of other gods, but if the church is full of practices, methods and behaviors from the world, it is no less idolatrous.
He cuts down cedars
or retrieves a cypress or oak.
He lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest.
He plants a laurel, and the rain makes it grow.
It serves as fuel for man.
He takes some of it to warm himself,
and he kindles a fire
and bakes his bread;
he even fashions it into a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.
He burns half of it in the fire,
and he roasts meat on that half.
He eats the roast and is satisfied.
Indeed, he warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
From the rest he makes a god, his graven image.
He bows down to it and worships;
he prays to it and says,
“Save me, for you are my god.”
Isaiah 44:14-17
This scripture reveals an insidious way that an idol can sneak into a man’s life and begin to steal his worship. He does something that seems rewarding – that satisfies, provides, or otherwise pleases him. This is well and good, but when he acts and received what he desires, he believes he is being rewarded for his action. He begins to rely on his own deeds and worship the fruit of them. Out of the fruitfulness he has, he carves his idol.
But I ask you, why did the tree that the woodsman planted grow? What caused to rain to fall on it? Where did the strength needed to cut it down come from? What caused the fire to burn and warm him, or made the wheat grow for his bread?
The perceived chain of cause-and-effect between this man’s actions and his rewards could not have occurred without constant intervention from God. But by failing to recognize this, the man began to adopt a worldly mindset of self-reliance and self-provision, worshiping what he could do and get rather than what allowed him to have it at all.
And Achan answered Joshua and said, “Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I have done: When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. And there they are, hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent, with the silver under it.” Joshua 7:20-21
Here is one practical example: Achan had taken the garments of Babylon in secret, representing the ways of Babylon. We must note that Achan did not acquire this garment from a battle against Babylon, but Jericho, yet scripture specifies that it is a Babylonian garment. Why? Babel, and by extension Babylon, is the city that man builds to his own glory, and to accomplish his own entrance into heaven. It represents rebelling against God by attempting to enter His kingdom without Him. It is self-made righteousness. Religion.
Achan saw the garment of self-effort and thought it was beautiful. He coveted it, and he took the garment. He knew that this was forbidden, so he hid the garment.
The church of today, just like the Pharisees of two thousand years ago and Achan even further back, saw the ways of self-effort, adherence to rules and personal purity, and thought they were beautiful. We’ve coveted the stature acquirable through these means, and we’ve taken them for ourselves. We know that this is not the gospel, so we dress up our ways in scripture.
Further it is noted that Achan put the silver and gold under it. In Joshua 6, we see that the silver and gold was consecrated and God had actually intended Israel to take the silver and gold. This is because silver represents God’s redemption, and gold represents God’s divine nature. So Achan, in his lust for worldly success and the glory of worldly ways, placed the redemption and nature of God below what he could acquire for himself.
All of us have one or more areas in which we crave the ways of the world – to achieve our own godliness, and to strive for our own perfection. Often, this is the area we feel the most talented and competent in. ‘Let God be my righteousness where I’m weak,’ we say in our hearts, ‘but let me be great where I’m strong.’ Where we are meant to be most effective for the Kingdom, where we are most gifted, we are tempted to achieve in our own effort and for our own glory. It is much easier to rely on God for something we suck at, but when we have access to a glorious garment, it is hard not to wear it.
In secret, we submit to methods of self-effort. We market, we strategize, we psychologize, and we systematize so that we can claim the glory of success in some small or large corner of our lives. Even when we outwardly give God glory, if compliments about that part of our life give our heart secret pride, God opposes it because the enemy can, and will, use that pride to trip us. Before we know it, instead of relying on God, our actions display self-reliance, no different from the world, and God can no longer enable our victories because it would send the wrong message.
As mentioned above, Achan placed the consecrated things under the garment of Babylon he had stolen. In short, he resorted to the garment first, only to pull out the silver and gold when the garment failed him. How many times must God humble us before we start reaching for His redemption and nature first, instead of waiting to fail in our own accursed ways? So often the church will reject the provision or plan of God, not even recognizing it as such, and instead try doing things their way – the way they have always been done – and so fall into the sin that kept Moses out of the promised land.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” Numbers 20:12
As we saw previously, the severity of Moses’ sin was that he failed to uphold the reputation of God before the people. Moses, instead of trusting in God, trusted in himself and a strategy that had worked before. In that moment, Moses had not brought glory to God, but to himself and his method. Moses had, in his frustration, appropriated a work of God for his own honor. Because God could no longer trust Moses to represent His Name, Moses could not be the one to lead the people into the promised land.
All too often God gives us a great testimony, but we fail to hallow Him with it. We get up on the pulpit and preach about what we did in the story as though our actions caused the miracle. We say without saying, ‘God did a great miracle for me, and if you want Him to do the same for you, do what I did!’ This is just a thin disguise over self-glorification. We give God glory at the start and end as though sandwiching the corruption between slices of purity will make our rotten sermon holy and pleasing to Him.
We get stuck in trying to recreate what ‘worked’ in the past rather than relying on the One who worked. Instead of remembering the miracles of yesterday as ‘what God did for me,’ we remember them as ‘what I did that worked.’
This is how idols are made. We take the sacred gifts of God and recast them in our own image. Then, we fill His temple with them. We acquire worldly victory, but we carry off their idols and set them back up in our temples in a vain attempt to ‘celebrate God’s victory.’
How does it make God look when those coming out of the world’s sin and abuse see familiar idols – familiar ways of living, speaking and ‘loving’ – in the church?
The Law of Love
You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? Romans 2:23
We, as Christians, take pride in looking different from the world, and as well we should! But just looking different is not sufficient – we are meant to look different by looking like Jesus.
Instead, we conform ourselves to laws we make for ourselves according to what we’ve heard on the pulpit recently, what we see in those we look up to, and what we desire to rid ourselves of. Then we look on our ‘separateness’ with self-satisfaction.
Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Romans 3:20
We forget this in our rush to appear holy and godly in the eyes of men. Our self-made rules and systems of Christianity mean nothing to God. Even the Mosaic Law was only a shadow of how to achieve righteousness, but it was incapable of making any man holy because man was incapable of living up to it. The Law was meant to give us perspective and ultimately redirect our attention to our Savior, but just like two thousand years ago, the church of today misses this constantly.
When we, or brothers and sisters we know, fail to live up to the laws of our present church culture, we do not say, ‘turn back to the Savior.’ We say, ‘you just need to be more disciplined, you need to pray with boldness, read this scripture, raise your hands in worship, find more accountability…’
It is by the Holy Spirit, not the laws or the deeds of man, that we are conformed to the image of Christ.
A big contributor to this confusion is that many Christians seem to believe that after we come to Christ, we are empowered to obey the laws of Christianity, and that doing so is the next step on our journey to heaven.
Not so!
The Holy Spirit’s purpose is not to enables us to obey rules and appear disciplined and holy, and it demeans Him to believe so. The Holy Spirit gives us a new heart so we can attain the goal of the Law without stumbling over the impossible challenge of perfect living.
Jesus revealed all of this when He summarized the Law thus:
Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40
The goal of the Law – its purpose to the hypothetical man who fulfills it – is to help him love God and his neighbor. The Law is a practical means of love, a guide to proper relationship with both God and man. The guide is perfect, but it does no good to one who is fundamentally unable to follow its steps. The manual for your vehicle is useless if you lack any tools to do what it says. This is not a fault with the manual, but simply a lack of equipment.
In this allegory, think of the Holy Spirit as a trained mechanic. He has both the knowledge of the manual, and the tools to act upon it. When you have Him, you actually don’t need the manual. It is still good to read it here and there, as it can help you understand what He does and says, but ultimately, it is better to have and follow Him, because He can much more effectively get you to the same goal you wanted to get to by obeying the manual – a functioning vehicle.
The end of the Law is love. If we love, we have fulfilled the purpose of Law, and have no need to go backwards and get tangled up in the old way that saved nobody. Love is what sets the church apart from the world. Personal righteousness and spiritual achievement was never the point of staying separate, but separateness was meant to set our hearts and minds into a position and capacity for greater love.
However, the church commonly makes its boast in the Law (or rather, its own self-made law) – in knowing and upholding it – while forgetting the goal of the Law. Every hypocrisy I have spoken of is an example of this. We preach about and take pride in staying separate from unholy things, but we have forgotten that while this is good, it is not and was never sufficient for godliness. Behold, even when Israel obeyed the Law, made their sacrifices, fasted, and kept the Sabbath, God still considered them unrighteous because they did not love (read just about any of the books of the prophets to see examples of this.) They had missed the point of all their lawfulness, which was to guide them into love.
Today, we preach sermon after sermon about what a Christian should avoid, not participate in, or do religiously, and all the reasons for all these things. But to hear a preacher speak about holiness while the church fails to uphold the tenets of love – which, again, is the purpose of holiness – is such glaring and common hypocrisy that it has become a point of cultural mockery towards the church.
“There’s no hate like Christian love.”
We call many things love, but often forget how God defines love.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
I’ll save a more thorough discussion of this scripture for later, but suffice to say for now that if the church truly upheld this standard of love, our effectiveness as evangelists would be drastically improved.
Yet instead the church is known for being impatient, judgmental, meddling, pompous, rude, thoughtless, self-aggrandizing, sensitive, and secretly sinister.
Let me give you just one example of how our understanding of love has been twisted away from God’s definition. I have heard many Christians express some variety of the following sentiment: “God is not nice.”
While I understand what is meant when this is said – that we cannot sacrifice truth and boldness to spare people’s feelings – it presents a false choice. Many Christians seem to think that they must make a binary choice to either uphold truth and be offensive, or to compromise the truth and be nice.
Fortunately for us, it is possible to uphold the truth and be nice. In fact, we are directly commanded to walk that line, as love is both kind and rejoices in the truth.
For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. James 2:10
James says it best, and his words are what this issue comes down to. Even if we could uphold all the tenants of the Law, or live up to all the cultural norms of modern Christianity, it would amount to complete lawlessness if it did not stir love within us.
We could skip every worldly holiday, throw out every fantasy book or film with ungodly imagery. We could refrain from half the foods in the world, plug our ears in the presence of heavy metal music, turn our gaze away from every person we find attractive. We could raise our hands in worship until our muscles ached, speak in tongues for six hours every day, and read seventeen chapters of scripture each morning at 3am. We could do this and every idea that every preacher has ever had about how to maintain holiness and separateness from the world.
If after all of that, we still fail to love, we have broken the entire Law.
But if we choose the way Christ made for us and trust the Holy Spirit, His love will inhabit us and begin to radiate from us. In this process, all the rest will be put into proper order because we have achieved the goal that God has set before. If Love is our guide and our goal, we will act rightly in all situations and respond rightly to all temptations. We will not need systems and codes of behavior – we will have a right heart when we face each test, and so we will pass without even realizing it, because our eyes will not be on ourselves, but on God and our neighbor. Our concern will not be for our own righteousness, but for the heart of our bridegroom and the well-being of our fellow man.
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. John 15:12-13
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