[This is the journal entry from my quiet time with God today. I use the stop, look, listen, and respond format for my quiet time. I stop to confess sins, pray for people and concerns, and then ask God to show me the truth in His Word that He wants me to see and apply that day. Then I read at a chapter of Scripture. This year, I'm following a plan for reading the New Testament created by the Navigators. In this process, I look for the specific verse or verses in which God seems to be most communicating with me in the reading. I then spend time listening, seeking to discern what I believe God is telling me in that passage that has caught my attention. Then, I respond to the truth that I've prayerfully discerned in some way. Today, I looked at 1 John, chapter 1.]
Look: “If we claim that we have fellowship with Him and are walking in the darkness, we are lying and not doing the truth. But if we are walking in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:6-7, Disciples Literal New Testament translation)
Darkness is that place that is outside of fellowship with the God we meet in Jesus. In the prologue to his gospel, John says of Jesus, God the Son Who came to share our human lives: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5, NIV)
Because we’re born in sin, born with an impulse to get our own ways, to “be like God” as Genesis puts it, we’re born in darkness. I may know the difference between right and wrong because God’s Law is written on my heart. But I still like darkness for several reasons, I think:
1. I don’t want to see my sinful impulse or the sins I commit because of it. I’d rather go on living in the blissful delusion that I’m a good guy, righteous, right with God.
2. I don’t want others to see that I’m not as good a person as I portray myself to the world as being. All too often, I value my appearance over my character. I can be one of those whitewashed tombs Jesus talks about.
3. I don’t want God, when I get around to thinking of Him, to see my sin. Like Adam and Eve, I want to hide from God. But of course, that’s impossible.
In the wilderness, when God’s Old Testament people saw the bright reflection of God in Moses, they begged not to be made to see God face to face. In the perfect presence of God, my imperfections become painfully clear. But when God came into our world in the person of Jesus, the Light invaded this dark planet and today, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the crucified and risen Jesus confronts me. He commands me to repent and to believe in Him so that I can be part of God’s eternal kingdom. In essence, He wants me to:
1. Own the dark places in which I like to live and the dark acts I’ve committed that I try to hide from Him. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said famously about public wrongs, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” It’s equally true of what Jesus, the Light of the world, does for me when I come into His presence. I can see how desperately I need the forgiveness of God that is available through Jesus. I also can see the clearly-illuminated path to life with God, Jesus Himself.
2. See the perfection of God and thereby see my need to worship Him, not myself, not my desires, not my family, not my country. I’m to worship the God Who made the universe, revealed definitively in Jesus, alone. When Jesus uncupped His hand allowing three of His disciples to see Jesus in His divine perfection, the disciples did the only sensible thing there was to do, they bowed down and worshiped Jesus. In Jesus, I see the ever-new life that He offers to me each day as I follow Him. (Also here.)
According to John in the Bible verse that has my attention today, when I willingly come to the Light of Jesus, God gives me fellowship with all the other confessed sinners who make up Christ’s Church and Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross, washes me clean of my sin, of my preference for and addiction to the darkness.
Listen: Today, God is calling me to absolute honesty in my dealings with Him. He isn’t calling me to a moral perfection of which I am incapable. He’s calling me to own what I try to conceal from Him, to bring it into His Light so that He can set me free from the darkness, the sin, that will otherwise be an ever-bigger wall between Him and me.
John carries this idea forward in the next three verses of his letter: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10)
I need to run to the Light, not away from Him!
Respond: Today, Lord, not as an exercise in self-abasement or self-recrimination, but from a desire to be renewed in You and Your grace, help me to bring all my darkness into Your presence. Help me to see the sin that clings to me. For the sake of Jesus and what He has done for me and the whole world, forgive me. Help me not to be afraid to walk in Your Light. Help me to see and live in the awesome love revealed in Jesus, a love that cares about me and calls me to live in Your bright kingdom now and always.
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting…” (Psalm 139:23-24)
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
Showing posts with label 1 John 1:8-10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1 John 1:8-10. Show all posts
Friday, September 27, 2019
Sunday, July 22, 2012
3 Things to Remember
[This was shared this morning during the 10:15 worship service with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]
Ephesians 2:11-22
Our second Bible lesson for today, Ephesians 2:11-22, was written to a Gentile (that is, non-Jewish) Christian community in the first century who lived in an area then called Asia Minor, which you and I know as Turkey.
But there is more than musty history to be found in these verses. In the midst of the demands and challenges of our everyday lives, these verses remind us to do three things:
Look first, please, at verses 11 to 13. We’re told, “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
To understand this passage, we must remember a simple Biblical truth: God is the giver of life. Without a connection to God, we are dead, even if we have a strong pulse and heartbeat. We are dead in our sins and we face an eternity divorced from life and an earthly lifetime of futility and meaninglessness without connection to God.
While the Bible tells us that there have always been people who have believed there was a God and who sought Him in their own ways, God first disclosed Himself and His nature to a single people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jews. The Jews were called by God to be His own people.
God evidently had His reasons for focusing His attention and energy on one people.
For one thing, the Jews were meant to be “a light to the nations,” showing the whole world the glory of God.
For another, the Jewish people became a laboratory showing the whole world how God’s law, grace, and forgiveness work, what repentance and faith are all about.
What we see when we read the Old Testament’s account of God’s interactions with the Jewish people is that He is no different from the God we encounter in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus. (See here and here.)
Look at Genesis 15:6. God has promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will have a son and become the ancestors of nations. It’s an outlandish promise--almost as outlandish as promising eternal life to those who repent and believe in Christ. Abraham and Sarah were old, well beyond child-bearing or child-rearing years. Yet look at Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”
Now, flip back to Ephesians 2:8 and see the remarkably consistent way by which God brings salvation or righteousness to imperfect sinners like you and me: “For by grace [that’s God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
Verses 11 to 13 of our lesson tell us that the miracle of salvation, once a gift belonging only to the Jews now belongs to all who believe in Christ. As verse 13 says, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
It used to be that only Jewish men who had been circumcised, along with their wives, daughters, and sisters, could claim to be God’s people, reconciled to God, one with God. Those who weren’t Jewish were aliens, foreigners, strangers to God. But God has brought all who believe in Jesus close to Himself.
It’s good though, to remember who we once were without Christ. It’s good to remember that, in spite of not being “members of the club” and in spite of our sin, Christ welcomes all who repent for sin and believe in Him with open arms.
Nobody I know is more critical of me than me. There are times when I get so angry at myself, thinking, “How many times do you have to commit the same sin before you learn your lesson? How many more times do you intend to disappoint God with your hard-headedness and hard-heartedness?” But then I go to God in prayer and I read His Word and I’m reminded of passages like Isaiah 1:18, where God says: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
Or, Jesus’ words from the cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
I remember who I once was: A sinner without hope. Through Christ, like all who believe in Him, I have been transformed: a forgiven sinner with an eternity of hope.
Look at the next section of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:14-18. It says: “For He [Christ] Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances [this refers to the Jewish ritual and civil laws, not to the moral laws, like the ten commandments, which still stand], so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”
I heard a man say of his son, “He came out of the womb, cigar in hand, barking out orders.” Truth is, we all came into the world that way, more or less. The Bible, in Psalm 139:14, tells us that each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” But, we also come equipped with an inheritance from our imperfect human parents: an insatiable commitment to having things our own way, a desire to “be like God.” King David speaks for us all in Psalm 51:5, when he writes: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
We are born at war with God. But Jesus Christ has come to make peace between God and us.
Peace with God is what Christ has come to give to us. But it’s a peace that can only be ours when we surrender to Christ!
Jesus wants us in His eternal kingdom. But we can’t get in if we insist on holding onto our sins, if we insist that our favorite violations of God’s will for human beings are “no big deal.”
To God, every sin--from taking His Name in vain to sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman, from murder to false witnessing (what we call gossiping)--every sin is an assault that disrupts and destroys the peace in which He wants His creation to live.
1 John 1:8-10 contains words familiar to most Lutheran Christians: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and His word is not in us.”
The peace of God comes to those honest enough to admit their sin and honest enough to own their need of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to change their lives. In Romans 5:1-2, the apostle Paul writes: “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
In Christ, repentant believers in Jesus have peace with God and even with those who hate us.
I once read about a Lutheran pastor and psychologist doing graduate work in a major US city in the east. We’ll call him Bill. Bill began attending a local congregation and made himself known to the pastor. The pastor was happy to have Bill in the congregation and took Bill up on his offer to help in any ways he could. Bill saw a few congregants in counseling situations and occasionally led worship and preached.
As time went on, Bill became aware that, to some parishioners, the pastor seemed like an angry person whose venom was creating a lot of ill-will. Bill initially discounted it until one Sunday, just before a service at which Bill was to preach, the angry pastor lit into Bill, accusing him falsely of all sorts of maliciousness.
The service began and, silently, Bill begged God to help him get through it, knowing that the entire time the pastor was staring at him with searingly angry eyes. Bill says that God not only gave him peace internally, but also peace in his relationship with that pastor. He was eventually able to get the pastor to the help he needed for healing.
In Christ, God makes peace with you and if you will let Him, He promises that--in the words of Philippians 4:7--”the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Remember by grace through faith in Christ who you are right now: a person at peace with God and with others.
Look, please, at the final verses of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:19-22: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
After remembering who we were without Christ and who we are with Christ, Ephesians reminds of who we are becoming through Christ. Once foreigners to God, now members of God’s own household, confident of God’s love for us and His presence with us right now, we also have a lot to look forward to.
Through the witness of the apostles and the prophets found on the pages of our Bibles, God is building us up to be part of a temple, the very place God lives. And, as much as we may like our church buildings, it isn’t in brick, mortar, or plaster that God lives, but in people who dare to give their lives to Jesus Christ. As someone has said, “Christians don’t go to Church. They are the Church.”
And it’s this Church into which you and I are being built for all eternity. It’s the Church in which sin, death, grief, and futile toil will come to an end. Every tear will be wiped from our eyes and we will live with joy and purpose alongside all who have trusted in the Name of Christ.
The world has brought sad and tragic news to our doorsteps this past week. This life is fragile and fleeting. But when we who trust in Jesus, remember who we were, who we are, and who our God is making us to be, we do not despair.
This morning, we thank God for Christ and we recommit ourselves to that commission which Christ has given to every follower of Jesus. Turn to that commission, please, in Matthew 28:19-20. The risen Jesus commands all who have been saved by His grace:
Ephesians 2:11-22
Our second Bible lesson for today, Ephesians 2:11-22, was written to a Gentile (that is, non-Jewish) Christian community in the first century who lived in an area then called Asia Minor, which you and I know as Turkey.
But there is more than musty history to be found in these verses. In the midst of the demands and challenges of our everyday lives, these verses remind us to do three things:
- Remember who we were.
- Remember who, by grace through faith in Christ, we are.
- Remember who, by grace through faith in Christ, we are to be.
Look first, please, at verses 11 to 13. We’re told, “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
To understand this passage, we must remember a simple Biblical truth: God is the giver of life. Without a connection to God, we are dead, even if we have a strong pulse and heartbeat. We are dead in our sins and we face an eternity divorced from life and an earthly lifetime of futility and meaninglessness without connection to God.
While the Bible tells us that there have always been people who have believed there was a God and who sought Him in their own ways, God first disclosed Himself and His nature to a single people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jews. The Jews were called by God to be His own people.
God evidently had His reasons for focusing His attention and energy on one people.
For one thing, the Jews were meant to be “a light to the nations,” showing the whole world the glory of God.
For another, the Jewish people became a laboratory showing the whole world how God’s law, grace, and forgiveness work, what repentance and faith are all about.
What we see when we read the Old Testament’s account of God’s interactions with the Jewish people is that He is no different from the God we encounter in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus. (See here and here.)
Look at Genesis 15:6. God has promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will have a son and become the ancestors of nations. It’s an outlandish promise--almost as outlandish as promising eternal life to those who repent and believe in Christ. Abraham and Sarah were old, well beyond child-bearing or child-rearing years. Yet look at Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”
Now, flip back to Ephesians 2:8 and see the remarkably consistent way by which God brings salvation or righteousness to imperfect sinners like you and me: “For by grace [that’s God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
Verses 11 to 13 of our lesson tell us that the miracle of salvation, once a gift belonging only to the Jews now belongs to all who believe in Christ. As verse 13 says, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
It used to be that only Jewish men who had been circumcised, along with their wives, daughters, and sisters, could claim to be God’s people, reconciled to God, one with God. Those who weren’t Jewish were aliens, foreigners, strangers to God. But God has brought all who believe in Jesus close to Himself.
It’s good though, to remember who we once were without Christ. It’s good to remember that, in spite of not being “members of the club” and in spite of our sin, Christ welcomes all who repent for sin and believe in Him with open arms.
Nobody I know is more critical of me than me. There are times when I get so angry at myself, thinking, “How many times do you have to commit the same sin before you learn your lesson? How many more times do you intend to disappoint God with your hard-headedness and hard-heartedness?” But then I go to God in prayer and I read His Word and I’m reminded of passages like Isaiah 1:18, where God says: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
Or, Jesus’ words from the cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
I remember who I once was: A sinner without hope. Through Christ, like all who believe in Him, I have been transformed: a forgiven sinner with an eternity of hope.
Look at the next section of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:14-18. It says: “For He [Christ] Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances [this refers to the Jewish ritual and civil laws, not to the moral laws, like the ten commandments, which still stand], so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”
I heard a man say of his son, “He came out of the womb, cigar in hand, barking out orders.” Truth is, we all came into the world that way, more or less. The Bible, in Psalm 139:14, tells us that each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” But, we also come equipped with an inheritance from our imperfect human parents: an insatiable commitment to having things our own way, a desire to “be like God.” King David speaks for us all in Psalm 51:5, when he writes: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
We are born at war with God. But Jesus Christ has come to make peace between God and us.
Peace with God is what Christ has come to give to us. But it’s a peace that can only be ours when we surrender to Christ!
Jesus wants us in His eternal kingdom. But we can’t get in if we insist on holding onto our sins, if we insist that our favorite violations of God’s will for human beings are “no big deal.”
To God, every sin--from taking His Name in vain to sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman, from murder to false witnessing (what we call gossiping)--every sin is an assault that disrupts and destroys the peace in which He wants His creation to live.
1 John 1:8-10 contains words familiar to most Lutheran Christians: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and His word is not in us.”
The peace of God comes to those honest enough to admit their sin and honest enough to own their need of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to change their lives. In Romans 5:1-2, the apostle Paul writes: “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
In Christ, repentant believers in Jesus have peace with God and even with those who hate us.
I once read about a Lutheran pastor and psychologist doing graduate work in a major US city in the east. We’ll call him Bill. Bill began attending a local congregation and made himself known to the pastor. The pastor was happy to have Bill in the congregation and took Bill up on his offer to help in any ways he could. Bill saw a few congregants in counseling situations and occasionally led worship and preached.
As time went on, Bill became aware that, to some parishioners, the pastor seemed like an angry person whose venom was creating a lot of ill-will. Bill initially discounted it until one Sunday, just before a service at which Bill was to preach, the angry pastor lit into Bill, accusing him falsely of all sorts of maliciousness.
The service began and, silently, Bill begged God to help him get through it, knowing that the entire time the pastor was staring at him with searingly angry eyes. Bill says that God not only gave him peace internally, but also peace in his relationship with that pastor. He was eventually able to get the pastor to the help he needed for healing.
In Christ, God makes peace with you and if you will let Him, He promises that--in the words of Philippians 4:7--”the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Remember by grace through faith in Christ who you are right now: a person at peace with God and with others.
Look, please, at the final verses of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:19-22: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
After remembering who we were without Christ and who we are with Christ, Ephesians reminds of who we are becoming through Christ. Once foreigners to God, now members of God’s own household, confident of God’s love for us and His presence with us right now, we also have a lot to look forward to.
Through the witness of the apostles and the prophets found on the pages of our Bibles, God is building us up to be part of a temple, the very place God lives. And, as much as we may like our church buildings, it isn’t in brick, mortar, or plaster that God lives, but in people who dare to give their lives to Jesus Christ. As someone has said, “Christians don’t go to Church. They are the Church.”
And it’s this Church into which you and I are being built for all eternity. It’s the Church in which sin, death, grief, and futile toil will come to an end. Every tear will be wiped from our eyes and we will live with joy and purpose alongside all who have trusted in the Name of Christ.
The world has brought sad and tragic news to our doorsteps this past week. This life is fragile and fleeting. But when we who trust in Jesus, remember who we were, who we are, and who our God is making us to be, we do not despair.
This morning, we thank God for Christ and we recommit ourselves to that commission which Christ has given to every follower of Jesus. Turn to that commission, please, in Matthew 28:19-20. The risen Jesus commands all who have been saved by His grace:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”God has given us His peace through Christ. Share that peace with others by sharing Christ with them. That’s the work to which you and I are called while on earth. May it be our way of life. Amen!
Friday, December 10, 2010
"God is Love"
"God is love." God revealed this central truth about Himself in both Old and New Testament times. It's why 1 John 4:8 says, "Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."
So, would a loving God ever describe His human children with names like wicked, fools, or stupid?
As Dave Branon points out in this piece, the loving God of the universe Who ultimately disclosed Himself in the crucified and risen Jesus, has used these names for some people.
I hope that you'll read Branon's piece, especially if your notions about what the Bible means in saying that "God is love," has created a false image of God as an indulgent grandparent who doesn't care how we defile ourselves, hurt others, or dishonor Him.
Take it from someone who has done lots of wicked, stupid, and foolish things, for which God still calls me out each day, if God didn't love you, He wouldn't call you out for sins or willful ignorance of His will.
It's when God calls us out and we dare to hear what His Word tells us about His will for human beings, that we can exercise the gift of repentance and experience a fuller relationship with Christ.
Two other passages of Scripture come to mind as I think about the tough and tender love of God that loves you just as you are, but loves you too much to leave you there.
One comes from King David, the adulterer and murderer who the Bible describes as a "man after God's own heart." David knew all about having his deeds exposed for being wicked, foolish, and stupid. Remember that David had an affair with another man's wife and then arranged to have that man murdered. For two years, David went on merrily with his life before being confronted for his sins by the prophet Nathan. David repented. Psalm 51 is his song of repentance. But, here's something he wrote for the benefit of his fellow sinners who may be less than inclined to accept God's judgment of them for wickedness, foolishness, or stupidity:
They're well interpreted for us in 1 Timothy 1:8-10.
It's wicked, foolish, and stupid for us to willfully flout the law of God because doing so separates us from Him and His desire to be with us forever.
But when we confess our sins--when we acknowledge that God is right in calling us out for our sin--and seek and accept the forgiveness God freely offers in Jesus Christ, God not only forgives us, God also gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to resist our inborn inclinations to sin.
God is love!
So, would a loving God ever describe His human children with names like wicked, fools, or stupid?
As Dave Branon points out in this piece, the loving God of the universe Who ultimately disclosed Himself in the crucified and risen Jesus, has used these names for some people.
I hope that you'll read Branon's piece, especially if your notions about what the Bible means in saying that "God is love," has created a false image of God as an indulgent grandparent who doesn't care how we defile ourselves, hurt others, or dishonor Him.
Take it from someone who has done lots of wicked, stupid, and foolish things, for which God still calls me out each day, if God didn't love you, He wouldn't call you out for sins or willful ignorance of His will.
It's when God calls us out and we dare to hear what His Word tells us about His will for human beings, that we can exercise the gift of repentance and experience a fuller relationship with Christ.
Two other passages of Scripture come to mind as I think about the tough and tender love of God that loves you just as you are, but loves you too much to leave you there.
One comes from King David, the adulterer and murderer who the Bible describes as a "man after God's own heart." David knew all about having his deeds exposed for being wicked, foolish, and stupid. Remember that David had an affair with another man's wife and then arranged to have that man murdered. For two years, David went on merrily with his life before being confronted for his sins by the prophet Nathan. David repented. Psalm 51 is his song of repentance. But, here's something he wrote for the benefit of his fellow sinners who may be less than inclined to accept God's judgment of them for wickedness, foolishness, or stupidity:
Do not be like a horse or mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.And then there are these words, from the same New Testament book which reminds us that, "God is love." (Some of what's said in 1 John 1:8-10, will be familiar to most Lutherans, who hear words drawn from this section of Scripture regularly in our liturgy):
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.God's enduring will for the human race is laid out clearly for us in what scholars call the Mosaic Law, the Ten Commandments, here. Unlike Old Testament ritual and civil laws, the Ten Commandments are valid for all time.
They're well interpreted for us in 1 Timothy 1:8-10.
It's wicked, foolish, and stupid for us to willfully flout the law of God because doing so separates us from Him and His desire to be with us forever.
But when we confess our sins--when we acknowledge that God is right in calling us out for our sin--and seek and accept the forgiveness God freely offers in Jesus Christ, God not only forgives us, God also gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to resist our inborn inclinations to sin.
God is love!
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