God’s Unfair Bad Reputation

God’s Unfair Bad Reputation.

Have you ever heard someone say it?  Or perhaps if you are like me, have you ever laid on you bed many nights puzzling over this question yourself?

I was probably a small child the first time I probably asked this question. I know adults tried to answer it for me but none of them gave me a satisfactory answer.

Several times as a teenager when trying to share the gospel with other people the other person would ask me this question and I wouldn’t have a good answer for them.

I mean I understood people had free will, and that explained why not everyone would accept Jesus. But still the question lingered in my mind and I didn’t have an answer for it.

Again and again in my life the question just kept coming up. Why doesn’t God just forgive everyone?!?!

If God loves everyone so much that he is willing to die for them, why does he just not do this?

Why does he say that many will not be saved? “If God really loves people as much as He says he does why doesn’t He just forgive them?”

If God is so kind and quick to forgive, why doesn’t He just forgive everyone? I mean he teaches us to forgive everyone who sins against us, why doesn’t He simply forgive everyone who sins against him?

The lightbulb goes off!

I never got a satisfactory answer to this question till that moment when I was sitting in that Brazilian hotel lobby.

Don’t get me wrong I have learned about God’s need for justice and that sin must punished. What I didn’t understand is why after Jesus took all the sin upon him, why God couldn’t give a blanket forgiveness to everyone? I mean the idea of God kind of dangling the potential for forgiveness out there in front of us but saying “uh uh uh, you can’t have this, not unless you have faith in me”, just didn’t sit well with what I knew about God’s goodness, and generosity. I mean to me it felt a little like God had just paid the price for forgiveness but he was holding on to it, till we were willing to come serve him. I had these ideas of an earthly father telling his son he would forgive him, if he would come home and work as a servant in the house cleaning and doing chores etc. I from my experience of God’s goodness and love I knew that couldn’t be the case. If we human father are evil and we know this isn’t a right way to interact with our kids, how much more could it not be the case with our good heavenly Daddy. Even though I knew in my heart I was missing something, I couldn’t think of how I would dismantle that offensive servant idea in the mind of someone who didn’t have any experience with God’s amazing love. There was something I was still missing… not understanding, until that Brazilian hotel lobby.

Art and I were not even talking about the question of why God doesn’t forgive everyone, but when Art started explaining the simple lesson to me, my spirit within me started spinning with joy as it began to understand the reality of the answer to this question. The joyful answer lays within the mystery of marriage.

Let's back up first for a moment to cover a little background.

John 1:4&5 says: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and darkness has not overcome it.”

1 John 1:5 says: “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”

Light and dark. Light vs Dark. Very interesting concepts if you understand the physical realities of light and darkness.

Remember, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” -Romans 1:19-20

If you talk with scientists they will tell you that there is no such thing as darkness. No they are not crazy. Nor are they in denial of reality. They fully recognize that if you walk in “darkness” then you will probably trip and fall. Or if you go driving in dark with no headlights and no street lights then you have a very high possibility of crashing. No what they mean by saying “there is no such thing as darkness”, they mean that darkness is not a thing in and of itself. Darkness is not so much of what it is, as what it is not. You see darkness is in all actuality simply a lack of light.

That is right, darkness is simply what happens when there is no light around. Light is energy. Anywhere there is light energy then there is light. If there is a place where there is no light energy, then you have darkness.

I mean think about it, nobody ever says, “when you leave the room be sure to turn on the darkness please.” That is because darkness isn’t a thing. It is a lack of a thing. Or think of it this way, If you could go to the deepest cave underground and to the thickest darkness you could ever find, all you would need to do is light a tiny candle flame and the light would win. The darkness can never be so thick as to snuff out the light.

So let's apply this to God’s nature. Scripture several times refers to sin as darkness. Lets for a moment do a little word school. The Hebrew word for sin literally means “to miss the bullseye”. So in scripture the word sin means to mis the perfect essence of God’s nature. That is why God cannot sin. He can’t miss the bullseye of his very own nature. Sinning is doing something, or not doing something, that is the perfect nature of God. So we could say that sin is a lack of God.

Okay so lets get back to sin as darkness. If God is light that means sin in essence is a lack of God’s nature. Sin comes into existence in a vacuum of God’s presence. Sin cannot overcome God. Actually the very extreme opposite happens. When sin comes into the presence of God, sin is absolutely disintegrated. It has no possible chance of ever existing anywhere God is present.

If we go to the garden of Eden and look at what happened there we see that everything was created perfect. There was no death, everything lived together in peace. All animals were vegetarians, no animal killed anything else. No plants died, they provided fruit for food. God made man in His image. Part of that Image of God scripture is telling us Adam possessed was to have dominion over creation.

We tend to think of dominion mostly in a negative sense because of all the abuse we have seen come from that concept. If a man is domineering, that means he suppresses others. If one team dominates another team it means they beat another team to a degree that it was embarrassing for the losing team. Also we associate dominion with kings of the earth which for the most part have been self centered and are responsible for all kinds of human rights abuses through history.

But this is not so with God’s dominion. God’s dominion in its uncorrupted form is one that is powerful yes but it is protecting and serving. God is the source of life and on the earth humans were created to be the conduits for God’s life and light to come into the world. When man sinned that life line between the world and God was damaged. Corruption entered the world. For the first time, death and sickness enter into creation. God did not tell Adam “I cursed the ground because of you”, no he says “cursed is the ground because of you”. Adam brought in the absence of God on the earth, and in doing so he intertwined all of humanity and all of creation with darkness. Everything that now exists is corrupted.

So now God wants to live in his full glory with his corrupted children because he still loves his children (you and me). He wants to share his full power and goodness, and purity with us, but he can’t. If he were to bring us into his unveiled presence we would be absolutely disintegrated.

Did you know in Isaiah 6:5 when the Glory of God fills the temple and Isiah is crying out woe is me I am “ruined” or “undone”, the word actually means “destroyed”. As God’s presence is beginning to fill the temple, I believe in a very literal sense, Isaiah was beginning to be torn apart by the purity of God’s mere presence. I don’t believe Isaiah was just being a drama king and just saying dramatic words, or simple platitudes to honor God. I believe he was very much feeling himself starting to be destroyed. Even our very DNA is corrupted since the fall of man (hence why we have sicknesses and diseases). So God’s presence was probably destroying Isiah even down to the level of his DNA. Isaiah was disintegrating An angel had to bring a coal over and purify Isiah in order for Isiah to remain in God’s presence.

(FYI Jesus is that coal. Instead of Isaiah’s contamination contaminating the coal, the coal transferred its purity to Isaiah. Jesus transfers his purity to us.)

God wants us to live in his presence and share everything he has with us. The most valuable thing God has to share is God himself with us. When we look at Genesis 3, because of woman’s sin God says: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Note that the husband ruling over the wife is part of the fall. If it is part of the fall then it wasn’t in existence in God’s original design. This is also a metaphor for our relationship with God. It was not God’s original intent to rule over us. When we look at how the animals were named, God did not tell Adam what to call them. Nor did God override Adam’s choices. What Adam called them God was happy to call them. God was giving us a privileged position of sharing in co-authority. But when sin entered the world, for our own good and the good of the world, we could no longer be on a level field with God. We had to be lowered and our desire would be for God and He would have to rule over us.

Okay to summarize, God wants us to live in a non ruler / subject relationship, God wants to share with us the very best thing in all of creation that He can give us… HIMSELF! He wants us to live in his presence. He wants to live in us and us in Him, but if he approaches us in all of his Holiness (aka goodness, love, purity) He would destroy us whom he loves.

This leaves God in a bit of a predicament. God wants to live with us but if he does His nature will destroy us. I mean if someone sins against me I can forgive them but it doesn’t remove the sin. When we sin against God we create a lack of God space (darkness) in our being that isn’t just removed because God forgives us; darkness is still interlinked with our being.

So how does the mystery of marriage solve this problem? Well I still can’t tell you yet. I still need to do a little more ground building.

The Blood of Goats and Bulls

'The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship… It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, my God.’ ” ‘ - Hebrews 10:1,4-7

I am going to assume that most reading this book could see the parallels of the Old Covenant animal sacrifice and the removal of sin. The basic gist was that since sin brings death into the world, when someone sins that person must die. Now God made an alternative for people. He said if you put your sins on a pure and perfect animal that doesn’t deserve to die, it can die in your place so that you can live.

Here is the kicker though, Hebrews tell us that the blood of bulls and goats can’t take away human sin. They are not in the same spiritual position of authority on the earth. The author of Hebrews tell us that all these animal sacrifices didn’t actually do anything (or were not in essence anything real) but rather were a shadow of the realities themselves.

Remember when Moses asked God what to call Him, God said: “I am that I am”. God is the absolute reality. He is the very definition of reality. Jesus (reality) stepped into human flesh becoming tied with us at the very DNA level and became the perfectly pure and innocent human sacrifice for us. He is actually able to carry away man’s sin.

Okay now we are ready and prepped to see how the mystery of marriage answers the question of why God doesn’t just forgive everyone.

Crucified with Christ

Paul in writing to the Galatians said: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” - Galatians 2:20 NIV

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When Jesus went to the cross Paul also went to the cross! I personally believe that in the spiritual realm this is much more than a beautiful metaphor. I believe Paul really means he went to the cross with Jesus. How so?

Remember that when Adam woke, he joined himself forever through covenant with his wife. Because of that covenant the two became one flesh and were bound together for all eternity. Out of that union new life was formed in the form of a baby that is both of their DNA combined together.

Jesus in the most profound way ever in all of history and the universe in essence gets on one knee (humbling himself and getting low) and proposes to us. He lowered himself to serve man, He humbled himself even to death on a cross. He did this so that in his own words we could be one with Him and He and the Father are one.

Jesus wants to take our sin to the cross. He wan’t to exchange death for eternal life. He wants to exchange sickness and disease for health and life. He wants to exchange our status as servant to co-owner of all the house. A wife has access to everything the husband does (at least in a proper healthy Godly marriage). But in order to have access to all these things he wants to give us, we have to be united to Him.

God is not holding back from us, he has actually carved out the only way in all the universe to be saved. He says join yourself with me! Become one with me and I can actually take you corrupted sinful nature to the cross, and you can rise again and live because you will be one flesh with me. What I am will be forever intertwined with you, and you will live and have access to everything. But if we refuse to tie ourselves together with Jesus, there is no way for our sinful nature to be removed from us. It isn’t a simple saying “I forgive you” by God. We have to be crucified with Christ so that we can live, but not live with our own lives but rather live by being bound with the life of Christ.

Next I hope to explain how marriage is really nothing more than faith.