How Judgment Makes Us Hypocrites

The previous post addressed how the church is to be people of love not judgment, which means that the church is not called to be the moral guardian of the culture. What we often fail to see is the fact that when Christians assume the position of moral guardians, they earn the charge of hypocrisy. All judgment except that of the all-knowing and holy God, involves hypocrisy. Whenever we find some element of worth, significance, and purpose in contrasting ourselves as “good” with others we deem as “evil,” we do so in a self-serving and selective manner.

This is the nature of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” We use this knowledge to bend the tree to our own advantage, to make ourselves look good while disparaging others. Instead of seeing our own sins as worse than others, we set up a list of sins where our sins are deemed minor while other people’s sins are deemed major.

In other words, we have “dust particles” in our eyes, but at least we don’t have tree trunks like “those people,” which is exactly the opposite from what Jesus taught (Matt 7:3-5). We feed our self-righteousness with this illusory contrast by ascribing ourselves worth at the expense of others. But “the others” we feed off of see the self-serving hypocrisy of the self-righteous and self-serving exercise, even if we don’t

This is illustrated by the outrage many Christians display about various issues related to gay marriage. As Christians argue for “the sanctity of marriage” there are a myriad of their own sins related to marriage that go ignored, specifically the high divorce rate within Christians circles. Even though the Bible says a good deal more about divorce than it does about monogamous gay relationships, “those people” are the supposed problem.

Christians may be divorced and remarried several times; we may be as greedy and as unconcerned about the poor and as gluttonous as others in our culture; we may be as prone to gossip and slander and as blindly prejudiced as others in our culture; we may be more self-righteous and as rude as others in our culture—we may even lack love more than others in our culture. These sins are among the most frequently mentioned sins in the Bible. But at least we are not gay!

Tragically, the self-serving and hypocritical nature of this moral posturing is apparent to nearly everyone—except those who do the posturing. It causes multitudes to want nothing to do with the good news of Jesus. While the church was supposed to be the central means by which people became convinced that Jesus is the “way, truth, and life,” activity like this has made the church into the central reason many are convinced that he is not.

There’s nothing beautiful or attractive about this sort of self-serving, hypocritical behavior. The beauty of the cross and the magnetic quality of Calvary-like love has been smothered in a blanket of self-righteous, self-serving, moralistic posturing.

—Adapted from The Myth of a Christian Nation, pages 138-138

- Greg Boyd

There is another world in Christ

 It is actually rather basic, but deeply profound; at least for me. What is required is that we ask for eyes of faith to see what God sees in Christ. He will school us in his ways as we seek him first in the Scripture’s reality in Christ. He will work things into our lives that will shorn away the accretions of the ‘worldly-system-wisdom’ with his wisdom; the wisdom of the cross. He will allow you to ‘feel’ the existential weight of his life, and the reality that that upholds, and within this, this apocalyptic reality of his in-breaking life into ours, the reality that the God who could rightly condemn us has broken into the surly contingencies of our sinful lives and become the ‘Judge, judged.’ If the God who holds all reality together by the Word of his power in Jesus Christ invades this world in the Son, takes his just condemnation of our sins (no matter what they are!) upon himself for us, puts that death to death in his death on the cross, and then re-creates all of reality in his resurrection; then there remains no space for condemnation. The One who could condemn me stands in the way and has eliminated the sphere for condemnation insofar that he has re-created a world wherein only his righteousness reigns and dwells in his enfleshed life for us in his Son, Jesus Christ. What I just noted is the key to grasp. There is another world in Christ; a world accessible by the eyes of faith, provided by the eyes of Christ, in his vicarious humanity which we are enlivened into by the Holy Spirit. This is the real reality that Christians live in and from; and it is this reality that I cling to whenever the enemy of my soul wants to bring me into a life of bondage that belongs to the world that he is king over; a world that is dead and no longer real by virtue of the reality of God’s new world re-created and realized in the primacy of Jesus Christ.

- Bobby Grow

The Consuming Fire

 Know therefore today that it is the LORD your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the LORD has spoken to you. --Deuteronomy 9:3

A fire is so interesting; it sucks the life out of the object that it consumes, so it is only possible where there is some level of life. Fire is life exiting. Simply burn a log and watch energy and life departing from the wood. All that will be left after life exits is ash, a lifeless, dead thing. One day the earth will be destroyed by fire. It makes sense. Jesus, the Life that holds it together, will be withdrawn, fire will be the result, and the life will be returned to the Father.When Jesus exits, there is nothing left. He is the Divine Glue that holds all things together, but by fire the glue leaves. II Peter 3:7, “But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” A great fire is coming to the earth, to things above the earth and those below. When Jesus, who is eternal, exits, a fire that is eternal will remain. There is a fire for those who have not believed. It is only extinguished by faith in Him. Belief is the only thing that can quench it. In the end, the unbelievers will get their wish. He will depart completely from them, and all that will be left is fire. 

- Mike Wells

Church: A Place of Love, Not Judgment

Jesus said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned” (Luke 6:37). Jesus contrasts love and judgment as antithetical activities. This verse comes immediately after Jesus told us to love our enemies (Luke 6:27, 35). We cannot love and be judgmental at the same time.

When the church assumes the role of moral guardians of the broader culture, Christians become judges over others. Not only is there no precedent for this in the life of Jesus, but Scripture explicitly and repeatedly forbids us to judge others.

This why the original sin of the Bible is depicted as eating from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Our fundamental job is to love like God loves. We are not to pretend that we can know good and evil as some kind of moral guardians because we cannot know what God knows.

When the church sets itself up as the moral police of the culture, Christians earn the reputation of being self-righteous judgers rather than loving, self-sacrificial servants. While outcasts and sinners gravitated to Jesus because of his magnetic love, people today tend to steer clear of the church.

The brutal fact is that we Christians are not generally known for our love. This is catastrophic! Love is the all-or-nothing of God’s kingdom. Above all we are to love (Col 1:14). Everything we do is to be done in love (1 Cor 16:14). We are to imitate God by living in Christlike love (Eph 5:1-2).

If we lack love, everything we do is devoid of kingdom value, however impressive it might otherwise be. Not only this, but God has leveraged the expansion of his kingdom on the church loving like Christ loves. By God’s own design, the corporate body of Christ is to grow as the corporate body does exactly what the incarnate body of Christ did—dying for those who crucified him.

Until the broader culture identifies us as loving, humble servants, and until outcasts and sinners are beating down our doors to hang out with us as they did with Jesus, we have every reason to accept our culture’s assessment of as correct: we are more judgmental than loving.

The ugliness of self-serving, judgmental religion pushes people away from God’s kingdom. The beauty of humble, Calvary-like love pulls them in. If we lived in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, we would in time possibly find outcasts and sinners—that is those who are most maligned and judged by religious people—hanging out with us. Only in such a kingdom context can they experience God’s love, worth, and acceptance.

—Adapted from The Myth of a Christian Nation, pages 132-135

- Greg Boyd

What’s the Purpose of Old Testament Law?

Understanding the law in the Old Testament can prove difficult. For instance, Paul believed that the law is good and holy (Rom 7:12). However, he also said that it only serves to expose and even increase sin (Rom 5:20; 7:5-11). He wanted to carry out the law, but he also found himself unable to do this consistently (Rom 7:9-24). The result was that the law brought Paul to the point at which he proclaimed that he was a “wretched man” and cried out for someone who “will rescue me from this body of death” (Rom 7:24).

What then is the purpose of the law?

Paul argued that one of the reasons God gave the law in the first place was to lead us to Christ (Gal 3:17-24). The law leads us to Christ both by showing us what love for God and others looks like and by showing us how we can never be united with God through the law. “No one is justified before God by the law” (Gal 3:11).

We cannot arrive at union with God through the law because we cannot actually get our relationship with God right on the basis of our ethical behavior. We lack the one thing that is necessary for genuine relationship to exist: love.

The law is a classic Catch-22. Our efforts to get life precludes our ever getting life. And this is exactly the point! Through the law, God actually intensifies our need to get life in order to break us from the illusion that we can ever get life from the law.

The law pushes us to see that the only way we can get life is by being united with God, as was always intended. And the only way to be united with God is to receive it as a gift. A life-giving relationship with God can only be entered into when we stop trying to establish it on the basis of judging what is right and wrong. It can only be entered into by placing our total confidence in God’s ability to make us good and abolish our evil in Jesus Christ.

The only way to get life is to have it freely infused into us by the Spirit of God. As we learn to walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh, all that belongs to God by nature begins to evidence in us by grace. When we abide in love, the evidence of love is manifested in our lives. Without striving to keep a list of laws which means that we are trying to acquire something we don’t yet have, we don’t strive to acquire something we don’t yet have. We now can manifest love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in our lives. There is no law that can get us such things (Gen 5:16-23). And there is no law that can get us such things.

—adapted from Repenting of Religion, pages 90-93

- Greg Boyd

The spirit shrieked,

The spirit shrieked, convulsed him and violently
came out. Mark 9:26

Evil never surrenders its grasp without a tremen-
dous fight. We never arrive at any spiritual inher-
intense through the enjoyment of a picnic but al-
ways through the fierce conflicts of the battlefield.
And it is the same in the deep recesses of the soul.
Every human capacity that wins its spiritual free-
dom does so at the cost of blood. Satan is not put
to flight by our courteous request. He completely
blocks our way, and our progress must be recor-
ded in blood and tears. We need to remember
this, or else we will be held responsible for the ar-
rogance of misinterpretation. When we are born
again, it is not into a soft and protected nursery
but into the open countryside, where we actually
draw our strength from the distress of the storm.
"We must go through many hardships to enter
the kingdom of God.  Acts 14:22 

- John Henry Jowett