Jesus We Talk About Off The Hook
Dear Thomas,
In your fifth question you state, “Most people feel a person should be responsible for their actions, but the Christian says he has been let off the hook for his mistakes.
I think I have heard you say that Christians are justified or absolved. Does that mean they just don’t want to take personal responsibility for their actions and have created a neat way out?”
If you recall, in my response to your first question, I talked about what happened at the fall of mankind and how the effects of that fall have been passed down through all generations.
Thus, we have all fallen short of God’s original intention for us. We were born that way, and we find ourselves often living that way. The issue is this: What can we do about it?
As stated before (chapter 4), a reasonable case could be made that through self-help and effort, we can live pretty good lives, at least as others reflect on it. But all of us have to admit that we have made mistakes and consciously violated relationships.
We all have directly rebelled and acted unloving because of our self-centered interests. If we are guilty of such behavior, then we are stuck with the consequences.
As I have also mentioned before, Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” Like it or not, all of us have sinned, and all of us have a tendency to act toward self-interest and self-centeredness. All of us have exercised that self-interest and self-centeredness at the expense of others.
If God means what He says and the wages, the payment, or consequence of sin is death, because of our disconnect from God, then you and I are on death row. We may be model prisoners, but we are still subject to a penalty as justly decreed.
You and I may not like the consequences, but the good news is that God doesn’t like the consequences either. You and I can’t do anything about it. We are guilty. But God can and has done something about the dilemma we find ourselves in! Reflecting on my answers to some of your other questions,I repeat that that is what salvation or God’s rescue is all about.
God wants to heal us from our natural tendency to act from this innate sinful condition. He wants to heal us from unloving actions and self-centeredness. He wants us to experience a new beginning, a new birth, a new heritage where that tendency is not the primary operative in our lives. He wants us to become alive by being in a relationship with Him, spiritually alive. And it is all done because of and through the incarnation, life, and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but wants them to turn from evil and live (see Ezek. 33:11). That is a real contrast from the idea that God is eagerly waiting to judge and condemn. It eliminates a legal and judgmental understanding of the gospel that views God as the judge, jury, and executioner who has no remorse assigning the ultimate penalty for offenses against His law.
That just isn’t the way God acts. God’s love for us is constant and unconditional. We don’t have to carry around all the old baggage of faults and mistakes or even the guilt from them. We are loved, forgiven, and set back into the right relationship with God, who by open invitation says, “Come, the wages [or consequences] have been paid. I forgive you.” Our willing response to that invitation is called justification. In it, we are forgiven, freed from blame, declared guiltless, and absolved from our past failures as expressed in Chapter 3.
This is not just a neat way out but a fantastic way out, one delivered at a tremendous cost. It took the perfect life and death of Jesus Christ to accomplish it. It took an excruciatingly painful experience of separation between God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, who joined Himself with humanity, which no created being will ever truly understand.
From the moment that Jesus agonized in the garden of Gethsemane to His eventual death on the cross, God’s heart was ripped apart. The Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are one in community, the same in essence.
When Jesus said on the cross, He was experiencing a breach in His relationship with the Father and Holy Spirit as He took on the sins of the world. Jesus completed what needed to be done for our rescue.
The question should be asked, “How does this act put us in the right relationship with God and become active in our lives?” The rescue is not forced on anyone.
It is what a gracious God offers any sinner who will choose it. And how do we choose it? It is as simple as asking for it and then accepting it.
It is a relationship with the rescuer. It is recognizing our need for a Savior and faith in the one who saves. But that is not always easy for the person who has genuine doubts about Jesus Christ as God or even the existence of God Himself. Many, therefore, have prayed a skeptic’s prayer. Such a prayer might sound like this:
God, I doubt. I am not sure You even exist. I am not sure that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior. I don’t know what is myth and what is truth. To be honest,I just don’t know.
But if You do exist, if You do relate personally to those who seek You, I want to know. I want to seek the truth and know the truth about You. Please let me know.
If, in honest thought and desire, you want God to be active in your life, you can pray a sinner’s prayer to ask for forgiveness and invite the Spirit of Jesus Christ into your life. Numerous versions are available, but basically a sinner’s prayer first acknowledges your need or condition and expresses a desire for change.
It recognizes who Jesus is and what He did for you. The salvation He offers as a free gift is offered through grace (endowed with favor). And it expresses the belief that God, through His Spirit, will honor your request. As 1 John 1:9 says,
Nothing will stop God’s coming to the person who desires it. The Bible says in Romans 8:37-39, No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The sinner’s prayer is one that I myself find need of. It is a prayer that expresses desires that seem to be a constant on this side of heaven. Thus, a sinner’s prayer might sound something like this:
Jesus, please forgive me. I regret the things I have done against You, myself, and others. Eliminate those things in my life that I know to be wrong. Thank You for giving Your life for me on the cross so that I can be forgiven.
I want You in my life. I accept Your free gift of grace. Thank You for Your forgiveness and acceptance. Thank You for coming into my life and promising to be with me now and forever. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
I realize, Thomas, that you may not be ready to turn to God with either a skeptic’s or a sinner’s prayer. I have not yet answered many of your questions. But when the time comes, remember these examples of prayers and use them in any way you want to help you turn to God.
God is just waiting for the opportunity to strike up a real and personal relationship with you, one that will be truly life-changing both now and forever.
I was very young when I said the sinner’s prayer similar to the one above. What an enormous difference it has made in my life! I invite you to recognize the person of Jesus and invite Him into your life as well.
You may wonder, however, what assurance any of us have that such a simple request of inviting God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit into our lives really changes anything.
How do we know it will really happen that we will become spiritually alive though we were formerly spiritually dead? How can we be assured that a simple prayer initiated by invitation from the Holy Spirit’s own prompting will somehow change us?
What is there about sin and how it got into us—original sin and where it came from—and the very nature of God in relation to it that gives you or me any assurance of freedom from it? Where did it all start, this sin problem, and how did we get caught in it? What happened that there even needed to be a way out?
Historically in religious and theological circles, many debates have raged about the understanding of original sin. Where did the failings, distortions, rebelliousness, and man’s self-centeredness come from? What happened to mankind that resulted in all the self-inflicted and othersinflicted pain experienced by humankind?
What causes us as human beings to crave power and control over others? What leads us to inflict emotional, physical, or spiritual injury, hurt, or even death to others, knowingly or unknowingly? Where does our disregard for parents and others or our lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, lusting, and murdering, be it in thought or action, come from? Can a justifiable cause or reason be found for this distortion and deviation from an original norm of life where sin, as expressed in all of its forms, did not exist?
If God is the first cause of all that is and if all causes lead infinitely back to the first cause, can we then blame God for sin’s existence? And if we can, does that mean God is flawed in some way?
And if that is so, can we put our faith and trust in a flawed God? If God is flawed, then why or how could we be condemned for being flawed? These are all philosophical questions, for sure, but what is the biblical answer to them?
I agree with those who assert that a reason or cause for original sin does not exist. If any cause for its existence could be found, then the whole idea of a God of perfect love who is holy, just, and righteous would be suspect.
Someone had to break that causal chain somewhere along the line. If no cause or reason can be found within God and the way He constructed and ran His universe, then what? It is obvious that sin and evil do exist.
Arguments for the causes and reasons for sin’s existence are many, all of which began with Satan and were brought by Satan against God Himself It was and continues to be Satan, the Evil One, who continually accuses God of being unfair to His creation and His creatures.
Satan claimed that God was holding back from us what was rightfully and potentially ours, which was for each person to choose what was right and desirable for himself. Satan accuses God of being harsh, arbitrary, judgmental, angry, wrathful, and unloving, always watching, recording, and searching for those that He can send to eternal destruction. Satan’s claims and the war he has waged against God are at the center of the human condition.
It was Satan, the father of deception and lies, the one who distorted the truth about God, who came to man in Genesis 3, convincing Eve and then Adam that God was withholding something from them that they should desire and have. Satan’s accusation was that God was untrustworthy and withholding their highest potential from them.
He convinced Adam and Eve that they could be godlike, which was never God’s intention for them. They were created to be spiritually alive in body and soul (mind, emotions, and will), free to experience an eternal, loving relationship with their Creator. However, the choices and actions of our original parents broke that relationship with God.
Because of that break, something died in them and has remained dead in all their progeny until it is made alive again by the prompting of the Holy Spirit and man’s willingness to listen and respond.
We were created to have God at the center of our being. It is interesting that the Tree of Lifes was located in the Garden of Eden but not at the center. Another tree stood at the very center of the garden.
God told Adam and Eve not to eat from that tree. It was called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (see Gen. 2:17; 3:3). In effect, God told Adam, “Don’t go there!” God did not want mankind to place himself at the center of making judgments on what was good and what was evil, which eating from the tree symbolized. It was for God alone to make those judgments.
Once mankind ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we became self-centered instead of God-centered. Ever since that event, all of us have been making judgments about what is good and what is evil based on our individual perspectives, worldviews, religious understanding, and self-analysis.
Is it any wonder that history has recorded so many conflicts? Since Adam and Eve’s fall, God has been ejected from the center of our lives, and we now know and experience evil. God never intended it to be that way, but the distortion of the truth and the lies of Satan prevailed in the garden.
Man’s eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil meant death—instant spiritual death and eventual physical death (Gen. 3:4-6). Eve and then Adam made a fatal error in judgment about God.
Why was Satan in the garden in the first place? If Satan had been prohibited from being in the garden, he could never have tempted Eve, and how different our history might have been! But God is love, and love requires freedom.
True love also requires trust between lovers. God wanted and continues to want a free, open, truthful, and trustful relationship with His created beings. Adam and Eve had no reason to doubt the truthfulness of God’s Word that eating from that one particular tree would lead to death, but they also had the freedom to do so.
Though God allowed the Serpent, the Evil One, to be present at the tree, Adam and Eve were free to avoid it as God had strongly advised. However, they failed to heed God’s advice and listened to Satan instead.
The consequence was immediate. They no longer enjoyed oneness with God. From a new self-centered, self-determined position, they judged that God did not have their best interests at heart and was holding back their rightful access to wisdom and knowledge of what was good and what was evil (see Gen. 3).
Adam and Eve’s response to Satan’s lies and deceptions initiated the history of sin and rebellion, but it also began the redemptive history of God’s rescue. By believing a lie, Adam and Eve failed to love God with all their hearts, minds, and souls, but God never changed His love for them or for us. Scripture tells us Satan’s origin and his ultimate end.
The why of Satan’s downfall and his ultimate end is analogous to and spoken of in the prophecy against the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:12 19.
You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created, they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. Through your widespread trade, you were filled with violence, and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.
By your many sins and dishonest trade, you have desecrated your sanctuaries. So I made a fire come out from you and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight ofall who were watching. All the nations who knew you are appalled at you; you have come to a horrible end and will be no more.
In John 8:44, Jesus said that the Devil is a liar and the Father of lies. He has always lied about God and the truth about God as revealed in Jesus Christ. This created angelic being’s rebellion is explained further in Scripture. Isaiah 14:12-15 tells us this:
How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”
Satan lied to Eve when he claimed that God had lied to her when He declared the consequence of violating their trust relationship. As stated in Genesis 3:4-5, Satan told Eve, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Exactly how Satan turned from being the most highly honored angel in heaven to the Evil One is not fully explained. We have only a few Scripture passages describing Satan’s rebellion and the subsequent consequences.
But if Satan lived in a perfect, loving, and sin-free environment, enjoying a position of honor, how and why did he develop into such an evil creature?
Now what follows is pure speculation on my part. Please understand this. There is no scriptural evidence for what I am about to say, except for the way I have tried to read between the lines. I have an idea that affords me a context and frame of reference when thinking about how Satan came to his stance against God.
First, consider the communal nature of God in the Trinity—the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. When I think of the Father or Holy Spirit, I have no physical image of them. Regarding the Father, I don’t know what all power and glory look like. I also don’t know what the Holy Spirit looks like.
I have assumed that they are not molecular and are beyond my ability to visualize. Because Jesus Christ was God incarnate, God in the flesh taking on our humanity, I can easily visualize Him. Thus, my primary access to contemplate and understand the nature of God is through Jesus Christ.
Scripture talks quite often of angels and heavenly beings (see Luke 2:13), who are all created beings. Could it be that prior to His coming to earth, Jesus Christ was to the angels and heavenly beings that special, visible, and even physical link with the Trinity that He was for us? Being truly God, was Jesus in a form that the angels and heavenly beings could easily relate to?
If such was the case and Satan was the highest-ranking created being, seemingly almost equal with Jesus in the heavenly realm, could he have wondered why Jesus enjoyed such super status as God and he did not? Could Satan have assumed an equality that was not possible for him as a created being?
When Jesus participated in the communal nature of the Godhead, could envy and jealousy have taken root in Satan without reason or cause? And if Satan allowed these thoughts to persist and nurtured them by spreading discontent among the other angels, might there have been an eventual conflict to the point of war in heaven?
As Scripture says, a heavenly creature, a created being, Satan, wanted to become like the Most High—even above the Most High—meaning any person of the Godhead but especially the Son. Remember, while Jesus was on earth, Satan tried to persuade Jesus to worship him.
All of these ambitions and lies of Satan have taken root in the nature of man in his pursuit of being a god unto himself. It is not surprising that man has thus constructed concepts—even religious ones—that make him the center of focus in ascending to the transcendent.
He tries to ascend to God all by his own will and striving. Too often from man’s point of view and judgment, he can reach God purely through his own efforts and actions. Man’s egocentricity seems to require it to be so.
Yet the Bible says it is just the opposite. There is nothing in man that leads to God. It is God who comes to man, and it is this coming that is at the heart of the gospel. It is this coming that was exhibited by God in the garden when He said to Adam, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). It was God who came to save mankind from total deception, depravation, and destruction in the story of Noah and the flood (see Genesis 6-9). It was God who came to Abram (see Genesis 12).
It was God who came to Jacob in a dream at Bethel (Gen. 28:10—16). It was God who led Joseph to his position in Egypt (see Genesis 37-50). It was God who came to the deliverance of Israel as expressed in the book of Exodus. It was God who gave the tabernacle and sacrificial system as symbols to Israel of the perpetual promise of His redemptive work.
And it was God who came to fulfill that redemptive work through Jesus Christ. It was God who gave the Law as a teacher, a guidepost showing man’s need for a Savior, his need for faith in God, and his need for the one to come. And most importantly, it is God in Jesus and the Holy Spirit who has come, is continuously coming, and will continue to come to man.
Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). This is not just eternal life but the abundant life expressed in Galatians 5:22.
Think what life would be like with an abundance of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is what David understood and requested in Psalm 51:10 when he said, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
The book of Romans is rich with the expressions of God’s coming and doing in man that which is impossible for man to do in and by himself. Romans 8:26 says, “The Holy Spirit prays for us.” Romans 8:34 explains, “Christ intercedes for us.”
Romans 8:31 declares, “If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:35 proclaims, “It is God who justifies [or puts us right]. Romans 8:37 exhorts, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 12:2 encourages, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
In summary, it is God in Jesus Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit, who is the Redeemer of the world. It is God who does His good and perfect work in man, not man redeeming himself through what he judges as good works, good thoughts, or good efforts. It is not man ascending to God but God descending to man.
If there is anything for man to do, it is that of being a receptor of God’s love. In John 6:28, Jesus’ disciples asked Him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Listen closely to the answer Jesus gave in verse 29, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Notice that even the believing is the work of God, and the doing is also the work of God. And by believing, we are changed. We are changed in our understanding of just how much God loves us, accepts us, and incorporates us within His family. Listen again to Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20-23.
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
All this evidence was brought about by God’s trustworthiness in executing His rescue of mankind. This adds to our faith and thus to a life that reflects our connectedness to God in the right relationship with his Creator.
The Spirit within us is alive. The “Christ in us” is actively doing its work within, slowly and surely healing our souls (mind, emotions, and will) from the effects of sin. Through trust, faith, and love relationships, we start reflecting on the love given to us in Christ.
It is this coming to a man that has always been the nature of God. Jesus will return to this world. It will be experienced by all our senses just as His first coming some two thousand years ago was. Let off the hook? Personal responsibility? Neat way out? Yes, yes, and no.
In Jesus Christ and through the work of the Holy Spirit, God has graciously given us a way of escape from the consequences of sin by who He is and what He did and does, all of which is made effective by our free choice.
It is a magnificent and glorious way out of the brokenness of this world, and it is offered as a free gift. It can be yours, for it is free for the asking and free for the taking. Remember the prayers detailed in this chapter.
Your friend,
Matt