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Having Faith like a Child

Published on by dpatrickcollins1 Comment

And Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:3 (NIV)

Yesterday I discussed the folly of trying to practice faith through a faith-factory lens in which we think Jesus is expecting us to generate faith through the raw materials of our intellect and human effort alone, instead of through the only thing that can, honestly, generate true faith: intimacy with God. It is our intimate connection with Him that reveals to us who He is and what He is doing, both of which supply us with the very faith we need for every situation.

Which, coming from a faith-based culture, seems a bit wrong-headed. We may believe God speaks, and that He often tells us what He is doing. But isn’t the task of having enough faith our responsibility? To suggest God is ultimately the one who supplies us the very faith we need sounds a lot like God doing our job for us. Doesn’t it?

Well, it does – if we are viewing Christianity from an orphan mindset. If we think God’s ultimate objective is to make us independent creatures who rely on our own abilities to accomplish great things on our own and forge our own destiny, then God supplying the faith we need will sound a lot like God doing our job for us. But if God’s real objective is a life of intimacy, characterized by our utter dependence on Him (like a child has with a Father or a Bride with a Bridegroom) then God being the one to supply the faith we need, indeed the One to supply all we need, is not God doing our job for us but instead His job description. He longs to be our everything.

When Jesus says “Have faith in God,” He is not telling us to try harder: He’s telling us to go deeper. He is not giving us a job; He is inviting us into a life of such close intimacy with Himself that we find ourselves commanding the very mountains He Himself is moving, being moved by the very compassion and hope He Himself is feeling, even the very anger at the injustice the Evil One has unleashed upon the world.

The endgame is a life of intimacy. Anything short of this will not only tie us in emotional knots but also lead to a whole lot of spiritual striving. The tragedy in all of this is not just that we are unhappy or unproductive, but rather we are not ourselves. We are alienated from who we truly are. For like a child or a Bride, we were created for intimacy.

My Champion

Published on by dpatrickcollins1 Comment

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.

Colossians 2:13-14 (NIV)

Last Sunday during church our pastor mentioned he felt there were many who had made Jesus their Savior but not necessarily their Lord, and he welcome those who felt God speaking to them about this to come to the front for prayer. But as soon as he said it, I felt God say to me, “There are also many who have made Me their Lord but not their Savior. Because they believe it is their job to save themselves.”

This was relevant to me. Earlier that week, I found myself praying a well-known passage from Revelation (I often “pray” the Bible): “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”1 As I asked God to come in and eat with me, I immediately got this impression of Jesus trying to make His way through my doorway but something getting in the way. When I asked the Lord about this, I felt Him say to me, “I can only come as your Savior. But you are trying to save yourself.”2

And then I had one of those “life flash before my eyes” moments in which I saw myself trying so hard to be a good person in order to please Him. I saw how I learned from an early age that it was my job to be good and led to believe I actually was capable of being good. God was putting his finger on these things, showing me how they made me resistant to the idea I needed a Savior, not just for my eternal destiny but also for life. Ironically, God also showed me in that moment all my moral and relational failures throughout life, clearly undermining the idea I was capable of being truly good at anything! I felt in that moment there was nothing good in me.3

We do not mean to save ourselves; it is just normal to think we owe God something, and that something is our own goodness. But the kingdom of God does not work that way. Instead, we bring him the worst part of ourselves and say, “This is all I got. Please help!” We bring Him our crisis, and He becomes our intervention. We bring Him our ashes, and He becomes our beauty. We bring Him our heaviness, and He becomes our joy. We bring Him our desert, and He becomes our streams of living water. We bring Him our nakedness and He clothes us in white. And He does it again and again and again.

Another name for Savior is Champion. Jesus is the one who fights for me. May I learn to be vulnerable enough to bring to Him the battles worth fighting for — that is, the ones I could not possible fight on my own.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

  1. Revelation 3:20 (NIV) ↩︎
  2. I should probably do a blog post on hearing God’s voice at some point, but suffice it to say: God is really good at speaking to us in a variety of ways when we set our hearts to listen. ↩︎
  3. Romans 7:18. God has a way of showing us these things without any condemnation, which was the case here. ↩︎

Peace Like a River

Published on by dpatrickcollinsLeave a comment

During pre-service prayer at the church I attend in the heart of Los Angeles, the theme last Sunday was rest. One of the members present shared a well-known verse:

Romans 8:28-29 (NIV) And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son

It occurred to me that, although this “sovereignty verse” is often understood to mean our justification* is secure, it means much more than this: that our purpose, calling and destiny are secure as well. God is telling us he has predestined the perfection of our faith and with it our destiny as well.

I know this passage and others like it have been used by some to suggest our part in life is nothing at all (since presumably everything has been predetermined**), but this is not, in my humble opinion, what this passage is saying. To assume so is to mistake God’s sovereignty for God violating our free will, an idea that is neither suggested nor taught anywhere in Scripture. But what it is saying is that the fulfillment of God’s plans and purposes are as readily available to us as salvation itself. In every moment, God has everything we need to fulfill the amazing life God has for us. We do not need to fear we are missing out.

Which on this particular morning was meaningful to me. I suddenly felt as if I had spent my entire life frantically navigating life as though I would miss out, first by failing to be acceptable to God, then by failing to “position” myself to be blessed by him. It was clear in that moment both of these attitudes were the very thing Jesus had come to deliver me from. That the image he desired to conform me to was that of a son who knew in each moment his Father had everything he needed to share in the fullness of the abundant life He had dreamed for him. And in that stillness I found peace flowing like a river.

*That is, our righteousness before God on account of what Jesus has done for us at the Cross
**A traditionally Calvinist perspective

Hypergrace and Other Myths

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The other day I had the fortune (or misfortune) of doing an internet search on the term “hypergrace”. It is a term I had heard in church discussions, mainly by those bringing attention to a dangerous new doctrine. But I had never taken time to find out exactly what those who used the term actually meant by it. All I knew is that the contention was that people who believed in hypergrace were teaching something that did not line up with what the Bible said. And so I decided to check things out.

As with most things internet, it takes a while to sift through people denouncing a thing but never getting around to what they really mean, but I finally stumbled on this comment from Dr. Michael Brown, who has been a critic against hypergrace, and this is what gets down to the heart of it:

[My] principle area of disagreement [with hypergrace advocates] remains [the] teaching that the moment we are saved, our future sins are pronounced forgiven.

When I read this, I was like, “Wait — what?” And then I realized Dr. Brown simply believes that as believers, we are not fully forgiven. Because of this, “hypergrace” advocates, in his mind, are promoting a dangerous doctrine. And it was in that moment I realized “hypergrace” is nothing more than the doctrine of grace, and of its advocates, I am chief among them.

In case the term “future sins” has you confused, let me do my best to explain. In Dr. Brown’s world — and others — God did not forgive us at the Cross: He forgave our sins. And “our sins”, by necessity only being the sins we had committed up to that point, are the only sins that were covered at that time. So it is possible, in Dr. Brown’s world, for us to find ourselves in a state where we are not forgiven, and according to Dr. Brown that is the state between committing a sin as a believer and “bringing the sin before God.” Up to that point, that sin is not forgiven.

Which, of course, might make you wonder what would happen if you died before bringing that sin before God. Dr. Brown does not mention anything about eternal security, but based on the Bible’s teaching on the severity of sin, I would have to think at least theoretically one’s chances of going to Heaven are in jeopardy here — after all, we are heading right for God’s presence with unforgiven sin.

But I digress. The real problem here is Dr. Brown’s understanding of what got forgiven at the Cross. He thinks its individual sins — which is why he makes distinctions between “past” and “future” sins” — when in fact what got forgiven at the Cross was us. Whenever the Bible talks about our forgiveness, it ties it to who and what we now are, not our sins themselves. Consider Ephesians:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us

Notice in this passage we are told who we now are (bold), then how this was made possible (underline). In other words, at the Cross God has made us holy and blameless in His sight and has adopted us as sons and daughters; He accomplished this through the Cross by which we were forgiven from our sins. It does not say God made us potentially holy and blameless in His sight or potentially adopted, provided we make sure to bring our future sins before God. Nor does it even focus on the sins themselves. Its focus is on what is now true about us: We are holy and blameless in His sight. In other words, it is not our sins (up to that point or otherwise) that got forgiven: It is we who have been forgiven.

By faith we have been transferred from the Kingdom of darkness to light, from a state of law to a state of grace in which our sins are no longer counted against us. This agrees with what we read in Colossians:

When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 

More than our sins being forgiven, the Law, consisting of decrees against us and was always hostile to us, has been removed. Because of the Cross, it is impossible for us to be punishable.

One wonders why anyone would make complicated such a clear teaching of Scripture. But I think the reason can easily be found by what those who have preached against hypergrace (can we please just call it grace?) are saying: They are afraid of what believers might do if they realize they are, in fact, fully forgiven. They may use it as a license to sin. The may live lives of unbridled debauchery, immorality, and corruption.

Now if our goal is to control behavior, I think this concern is totally legitimate. After all, if you tell your teenager your car is in the garage with keys in it and they are legal age to drive, there is no telling what they might do. But if our goal is to bring others into a deeper understanding of truth as well as a deeper experience of God’s grace, calling what is true not true just seems like a really bad idea.

Besides, what does it say about those who feel that if we knew how forgiven we are, we would use it as license to to sin? For one, it says they believe the only reason believers seek holiness and righteousness is fear of what might happen if they don’t. That they need that fear to be better people.

I have a different view. When Jesus went to the Cross, He went to forgive me completely: Making me holy, blameless, perfectly loved and perfectly accepted in His sight. And that transformation has put inside me a holy desire that cannot be satisfied by any earthly thing. Sure I can do as I wish. But what I want more than anything is to be where Jesus is, doing what He is doing. And fear of not being fully forgiven is one thing that I do not need to make sure I pack for that journey.

Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash

I am a Warrior and a Son

Published on by dpatrickcollins2 Comments

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.

Hebrews 2:10

I am a warrior, but God has called me first to be a son. The difference is when God calls a warrior to do a thing, a warrior says “yes” without hesitation but also without counting the cost. When things get difficult, the warrior finds himself on his own. He does not mean to be, but his “yes” binds him to continue at all cost, with only the recourse to endure. A son, on the other hand, though still saying yes, talks to his Father about what is difficult for him and what he is uncomfortable with. He recognizes that on his own he is nothing and that the battle cannot be won without God’s help. A son maintains intimacy throughout his yes.

I can be both a son and a warrior, but I cannot be a good warrior without being a son. I have permission to say, “this is difficult for me” or “I do not feel comfortable with this: Help me, because I cannot proceed here without your help.” This often marks the difference between success and failure in the Kingdom, because the currency of the Kingdom is intimacy. If we forget we are sons and daughters, we can often find ourselves suffering needlessly instead of benefiting from the one who suffered on our behalf. God has called us into battle, but the secret of the Kingdom is that it is always His victory.

Pour out before the Lord your heart: Tell him all you are going through. Here is where you will not only find comfort but also find His power.

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash