Series: 365

183 – We Were Created to Love and Be Loved

From the Beginning, God created us for the sake of love. We cannot exist without love. We cannot succeed at anything without love. Friendships, business, family ties, academics, government, society, international and domestic peace—everything depends on love in order to continue. This is because we as humans were made for love—both to give and to receive.

Our ability to love others is one in the same as our ability to receive love. Receiving and giving love are actually the same, single action. Sometimes we perceive and “feel” more receiving or more giving, but love really is always a two-way street.

No one can receive love without giving love. No one can love others without being capable of receiving love.

The person who leads the cause for compassion, head of an organization that helps those in need, but cannot accept the simple act of love, is not fully loving others, no matter how big the cause or organization may grow. Many people who are outwardly known as “the caregiver”, but don’t know how to accept love from others, are on a question to have love, but still haven’t found it yet. Don’t be surprised to find out who this is.

Just the same, many people seek to be loved by others. They know what they seek and they seek to be loved with conscious intent. They pray for God to send people who will love them. But, the truth holds just the same for them: Our human capacity to receive love and to give love are one in the same!

If you need to feel loved, then give love to others. If you feel love for others and you want to demonstrate that love for others, then pray for God to increase your own capacity to receive love that you might not be able to return.

Love between us and God is where it all begins and where it all ends. By loving God and accepting God’s great love for us, we automatically grow in our giving and receiving love with others—it’s an unavoidable consequence of true love with God and only flows from love with God first. Love is a God-centered circle.

184 – Jesus and Him Crucified

Jesus’s crucifixion was the greatest game changer in all history, Eternity past and future.

He was the perfect human sacrifice, completely completing every part of every sacrificial Law from Moses. He was and is the literal Lamb of God. Because of Jesus’s death on the Cross, Moses’s sacrificial Law has been completed and fulfilled so that no sacrifices are ever necessary, ever again. His sacrifice is applied to anyone merely by believing that it is real and sufficient.

Jesus sacrifice was a human sacrifice, but it had much more power than any other human sacrifice. For those who have engaged in human sacrifices, Jesus’s self-sacrifice at the Cross is sufficient to break their bonds with the Devil, to completely forgive their evil, and to give them all the power and permissions available to anyone who believes in Jesus as the Messiah from God the Father.

The power of Jesus’s sacrifice was demonstrated in his resurrection from the grave. No one brought Jesus back to life; he brought himself back. In his crucifixion and completion of Moses’s sacrificial Law, death permanently lost its grip on humanity. Now, Jesus holds the grip on the grave.

Paul prayed to know Jesus in his suffering so that he could understand God more and to attain resurrection from the dead, just like Jesus. Paul also said that he should never hope to boast about anything except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Of all the accomplishments in this world, the greatest work in any of our lives is the redemptive work of Jesus at the Cross to bring new life in our own lives.

Jesus did miracles in his first lifetime on Earth. He also delegated the power of miracles to his disciples. He could do this because he had the Holy Spirit living inside of him. That was possible because Jesus was sinless and because he is the Son of God. In the Old Testament, some people had the power of the Holy Spirit, but it came and went at God’s will.

But, when Jesus finished his work at the Cross, the Temple curtain ripped and God’s Holy Spirit became permanently available to all who believe in Jesus the Crucified.

Matthew 27:51, Luke 10:17-20, John 14, Galatians 6:14, Philippians 3:7-11, Hebrews 10

185 – Purchase Is not Praise

Patronage is not a spectator sport. Don’t fall into the passive-consumer worldview, which presumes that being the customer of a business or the patron of an artist is a kind of “endorsement”. Your money and your bills are not notoriety, they are empowerment. There is a difference. If you struggle at all with confusing endorsement and empowerment, then money in your life will always hold a glass ceiling above your head.

Jesus taught us to exploit “wicked wealth” for the good purposes of Eternity. Buying products from a company owned by wicked men is no endorsement of what those wicked men do nor does it say that you “believe in” what they stand for. Buying a product is only buying a product. What wicked men intend for evil, you can commandeer for the good of God’s kingdom.

The plans of the all powerful God Most High are not thwarted because He appropriated the quality tools that some devil volunteered to create at no cost. Sure, demons do evil things with evil intentions, occasionally performing quality craftsmanship along the way. But, if God interrupts their work after they complete their craft, but before their evil is consummated, then evil squandered itself and God had the final word.

So, purchase your needed supplies from whatever supplier supplies you best. Go and spread the goodness of those products, multiplying their effectiveness with your own creativity and insight. Eat the worm off the hook, the cheese off of the mouse trap, and re-set it to snag the fisherman and the mouse trapper. Buy stock in unethical companies in hopes that millions of fair and honest people will do the same, eventually taking a controlling interest and converting that company from good to bad, rendering all the efforts of evil an absolute backfiring waste.

See yourself as the solution, not the self-important spectator sprinkling little rewards of money with your power game onto the players you deem best deserving of endorsement. That is not the way to make a difference.

Patronage is neither agreement nor dissent, blessing nor curse. March right down your enemy’s road, not because you bless the road, but in order to take over his wicked kingdom.

Luke 16:1-9

186 – Lawlessness & Legalism Are Mere Addictions

Rules are not in themselves automatically good, but having no rules at all is automatically bad. Humanity needs the right set of rules, just how rules of the road empower everyone to arrive safely and quickly. The inability to follow any rules at all—whether good or bad—keeps people oppressed by poverty. Anarchy itself is a tyrant.

Legalism has been wrongly labeled as “making absolute what the Bible does not”. Adding rules to the Bible is actually “man-made religion”; “legalism” is the belief that God’s rules are merely moot, serving no pragmatic, sensible, and quite understandable purpose.

Lawlessness, by contrast, is a quasi-religious worldview. Lawlessness applied to the Bible seeks what “sins” God doesn’t care if we commit in the name of “forgiveness”. Both legalism and lawlessness ask whether we should feel obligated or liberated concerning moral rules. The premise is wrong for both.

When Israel obeyed God’s command not to eat pork, they weren’t “mystically better” than other nations; they were less likely to get sick in a world without soap and therefore more likely to survive against attacks from evil nations that instituted human sacrifices. Banning pork had nothing to do with pigs having “less favorable spirits” than cows and sheep, but simple survival. It made common sense. Unfortunately, the erroneous teaching of the New Testament Pharisees was “legalism”, viewing these rules as having some impractical, ethereal value in and of themselves. Pork was simply unhealthy. By Jesus’s time, society knew how to cook. So, God declared it “clean” to Peter, thus the Jerusalem Council did too.

God’s rules in the Bible are not any part of some silly test. People need rules. But, legalistic religious teachers don’t understand this. They oppress people with rules, viewing the Bible as a club to smack people with. Legalism creates just as much anarchy as its lawless worldview counterpart. By not hitting the nail on the head, the nail gets bent. Regardless of whether the nail bends right or left, hitting it again will damage the furniture.

Legalism is an addiction to following rules as an end to themselves. Lawlessness is much the same—addiction to having the free-spirited, uncontrolled life of an wild animal.

187 – Jesus’s Prayer: Love Each Other

In John 17, Jesus prayed that Christians would love each other. At the beginning of the 21st century, this remained Jesus’s great unanswered prayer. It’s not that God didn’t answer Jesus’s prayer, but that some prayers can only be answered by people.

Though God calls us to solitude at times, Christians need meaningful friendships with each other. Many of these are peer-to-peer while others are senior-junior relationships where one person is the “older sibling” helping along the younger, but everyone can learn from everyone.

The Bible commands us to love all people. “All people” includes everyone. But, petty squabbles between sectarian Christians seem to get a pass. Somehow, “Churchianity” Christians work it out in their minds so that this topic or that question or this other fact is some kind of an exception—some kind of an “excuse card” giving them license to fight and hate. That’s when you know someone has been swallowed up by a culture of “religious feelings” and understands nothing about the Bible.

When you see a Christian who thinks it’s acceptable to be disrespectful to anyone for any reason, to pass judgment before holding a thorough in-depth, face-to-face conversation, to be dismissive, to condescend while teaching, or to refuse general communication with other Christians—that person is the lowest of the low in Christian maturity and should be treated as a non-Christian in need of meeting Jesus for the first time. That person needs love as much as repentance, but isn’t ready for “Christian fellowship”, even as a junior, because welcoming basic love comes first.

Christians are a family, which includes people who annoy others. Siblings can easily be frustrating. When one family member snaps at another, that “snapping” does not address a problem in the recipient, but reveals a problem with the person who snapped. We all have our moments of folly, recognize yours and never make excuses.

Christians believe in the Jesus who answers prayer—the same Jesus who prayed that Christians would love one another and love all people, including enemies. Whatever ideas or notions lead you away from love are a lie from the pit of Hell. We all snap, but it is never excusable, never.

John 13:34-35; 17, 1 John 4:7-8

188 – Jesus Our Substitute

Jesus’s work at the Cross was a work as our substitute for sin. The reason we do not need to suffer Eternity in the Lake of Fire is because Jesus took that pain and punishment upon himself.

No one compelled Jesus to do this. The Father “commanded” it and Jesus “obeyed”. But, in this relationship that Jesus, the Son of God, is one in the Father, Jesus “commanded” his own crucifixion as much as the Father did, and the Father “obeyed” the will of the Son as much as the Son obeyed the Father did. They were in complete agreement without negotiation or compromise. For the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for that matter, there simply was no other option.

God would stop at nothing to redeem the human race which He created in His Image. We are so valuable to Him, so precious and beloved, that the Cross was nothing compared to the great joy and happiness that God has merely in enjoying us living with Him forever.

Jesus’s pain at the Cross was foreseen. The question has been asked in human history, “If God is good and knew Adam would sin, why would He create humans in the first place, knowing that they would choose Eternal damnation?”

But, this question is in error. Adam’s sin and millions of humans rejecting Jesus as their Substitute for Eternal damnation were not the only events that God foresaw before Creation. God also foresaw His Son—the Word of God made flesh—suffering at the Cross, and the Word of God nonetheless chose to speak Earth and the rest of Creation into being anyway. The proper question is: Why would such a God with foresight create a world knowing He would suffer so? The answer is: unimaginable love.

God Almighty will let none boast above Him. The Infinite, Eternal Son, during those Infinite hours of flogging, beating, and crucifixion, experienced the full weight of God’s Eternal wrath upon Himself. He suffered more than all souls Eternally combined. For Jesus’s work, he is perfectly just and fair in condemning any soul to a lesser pain for rejecting such a free and accessible gift as our Substitute.

Isaiah 53:5, Matthew 8:17, Mark 10:45, John 3:16-21; 10:11; 15:13, Romans 5:6, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 2:20; 3:13,  Hebrews 9:28, 1 Peter 2:21-25; 3:18, 1 John 4:10, Revelation 5

189 – Act Sentient, not Addictive

A tree follows the rules that govern its life process. Roots grow down toward water, branches grow up toward light. Those are the “morals” of a tree and the tree follows them automatically. If a tree were to search for water in the dry, hot sun or grow leaves for sunlight in the dark, damp soil, the tree would die. Trees depend on “tree morals” in order to thrive and survive. The rules must be something for the tree to grow, even if leaves were for soil and roots for light—the rules must be set somehow for the survival of the tree.

Our own human bodies have some similar rules about where to grow arms and legs. But, unlike the tree, humans have the option to obey or disobey many of the rules that our survival depends upon. Consider many communicable diseases as an example. Certain activities make people more vulnerable to disease, other activities make people less vulnerable—such as abstaining from more vulnerable things and, in particular, washing hands especially before eating.

Trees follow their “tree morals” without any problem. As a result, they live and thrive. But, we humans have the choice of whether to follow “human morals” that empower us to live, survive, and thrive. Too often, we run counter to our necessary morals and, instead, make self-destructive choices. This is because God, in His goodness, created us with a choice. When we follow the path of life, it is not as programmed minions, but as a choice. God does not program us to love Him and choose life. We choose love and life willingly.

Our tendency to run contrary to the path leading to life started with the sin of Adam eating the only forbidden fruit, thus planting sin into our bodies. Because of this, we sinfully-instinctively gravitate to object to morals, whatever they may be. If trees could sin as humans could, they would object, even if their leaves were for the soil and roots for sunlight.

Our ongoing tendency to object to our own moral needs—whatever they may be—is nothing more than an addiction to lawlessness—and addictions never help anyone do anything worth doing.