Personal Application
PERSONAL APPLICATION
í. When are you prone to sever the heart from the head—perhaps at the prospect of pleasure and for fear of missing out? Ask God to reveal to you habits of the heart that need His corrective grace.
2. Have you been in a situation similar to the student's? What did you do, or how would you conduct yourself now?
PORTRAIT OF A SOUL
"Come now, let us settle the matter," says the Lord. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword." For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
I SAI AH 1:18-20
n the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde describes an exceptionally handsome young man so captivating that he drew the awestricken adulation of a great artist. The artist asked him to be the subject of a portrait, for he had never seen a face so attractive and so puré. When the painting was completed, young
Dorian became so enraptured by his own looks that he wistfully intoned how wonderful it would be if he could live any way he pleased but that no disfigurement of a lawless lifestyle would mar the picture of his own countenance. If only the portrait would grow oíd and he himself could remain unscathed by time and way of life. In Faustian style, he was willing to trade his soul for that wish.
One day, alone and pensive, Dorian went up to the attic and uncovered the portrait that he had kept hidden for so many years, only to be shocked by what he saw. Horror, hideousness, and blood marred the portrait.
The charade carne to an end when the artist himself saw the picture. It told the story. He pled with Dorian to come clean, saying, "Does it not say somewhere,
'Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them white as snow'?" But in a fit of rage to silence this voice of conscience, Dorian grabbed a knife and killed the artist.
There was now only one thing left for him to do; he took the knife to remove the only visible reminder of his wicked life. But the moment he thrust the blade into the canvas, the portrait returned to its pristine beauty, while Dorian lay stabbed
to death on the floor. The ravages that had marred the picture now so disfigured him that even his servants could no longer recognize him.
What a brilliant illustration of how a soul, though invisible, can nonetheless be tarnished. I wonder, if there were to be a portrait of my soul or yours, how would it best be depicted? Does not the conscience sting when we think in these terms?
Though we have engineered many ways of avoiding physical consequences, how does one cleanse the soul? Today we ñnd a limitless capacity to raise the question of evil as we see it outside ourselves, but often we hold an equal unwillingness to address the evil within us. I once sat on the top floor of a huge corporate building owned by a very successful businessman. Our entire conversation revolved around his reason for unbelief: that there was so much darkness and corruption in this world and a seemingly silent God. Suddenly interrupting the dialogue, a friend of mine said to him, "Since evil troubles you so much, I would be curious to know what you have done with the evil you see within you." There was red-faced silence.
We too face Dorian Gray's predicament. Sooner or later, a duplicitous life reveáis the cost. The soul is not forever invisible. But there is One who can cleanse and restore us. The Christian worldview gives us extraordinary insight into this snbject of our soul-struggle, as God deais with the heart of the issue one life at a time. Indeed, in the words of the prophet Isaiah to which Oscar Wilde alluded: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (kjv).
God upholds the solution, asking only that we come "willing and obedient" and that we don't "resist and rebel" (Isaiah 1:20). So come, willingly and obediently, and find God's rejoinder to the marred portraits within. The greatest Artist of all speaks even today.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What perspective and reasoning would drive a person to forfeit his or her life and commitments for the sake of pleasure and limitless freedom?
2. How did the businessman betray his own heart? Why must the question of evil
ftrst begin with the one asking it?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. If there were a portrait of your soul, what would it look like after God's brushstrokes of grace and forgiveness?
2. How do you want to be remembered? Are you investing in this legacy in your relationships, work, and ministry?
REGENERATIVE POWER
We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture carne about by the prophet's own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit.
2 PETER 1:19-21
orne years ago I read a powerful book by the famed theologian Cari F. H. Henry entided The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society. The book was quite prophetic, for it set forth plainly where the lines of a cultural battle were being drawn and how far-reaching would be the fallout.
Two ideas that he juxtaposed immediately caught my attention. The ñrst was that "biblical truth, transcultural as it is, has an indispensable message for modern man."- The statement is a very logical conclusión for anyone with a high view of Scripture. But then carne the blunt portrayal of the contemporary scene in its relentless emasculation of truth, the hallmark of modern humanity. Cari Henry referred to this generation as "intellectually uncapped, morally unzippered and volitionally uncurbed."
This disturbing reality was driven home to me in a story relayed by a friend, a professional actor who dramatically narrates Scripture word for word.
Describing his last performance at a university, he said he had experienced something thoroughly unnerving. As he enacted the anguish of Christ on the way to death, students laughed through the presentation, mocking the pathos. This would never have happened in a Hindú or Buddhist context, where reverence is shown for anything spiritual, even if it is not part of their creed. Clearly our context is different.
How then does one communicate to people who have bought into such a mindset as Henry describes, who openly reject ultimate authority and ridicule the sacred? The answer is not simple, but we rob ourselves if we think it is therefore impossible.
First, let us be absolutely certain that every generation at some time has in its own way resisted the truth that God has proclaimed. In Matthew 11, Jesús compared His own generation to children in a marketplace crying out,
"We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn." (v. 17) They wanted John the Baptist to dance because they considered his message— the demands of the law—too somber. On the other hand, when Jesús carne with the message of grace and freedom, they wanted Him to mourn because it was too merciful. Any message that threatens our autonomy is automatically rejected, no matter what it is.
Second, as cultural fads ebb and flow, the inescapable truth emerges that century after century the power of God's written Word has surpassed, and will continué to surpass, the exhilarations of momentary experience, which are conceived and die in an instant. We tenderly set a halo on the forehead of feeling or miracle, but in times of greatest loss it is the written Word, the embodied Word, that carries us through, not feeling.
The apostle Peter reminds us of this very truth. We must remember that this is the same Peter who experienced the ecstasy of the transfiguration—a sight that caused him to plead that he and those with him be permitted to bask permanently in its afterglow. It is Peter who, contrasting the temporariness of that experience with the eternal and unfading brilliance of the Word, said, "We have also a more sure word of prophecy" (2 Peter 1:19 kjv). Inscripturation (the preservation of the written word) has a present and eternal point of reference, transcending mere flashes of feeling or of the miraculous.
Over the span of life, the Word can be tested time and time again, and its truths will stand tall as our culture's fascination with the subjective proves itself to be hollow and false. By contrast, the biblical documents have withstood the most scrutinizing analysis ever imposed upon any manuscript and have emerged with
compelling authenticity and authority. No other ancient literature demonstrates such a high degree of accuracy.
Not only does the Word come persuasively inscribed on paper, but also the effectual power of the Word is evidenced when that inscription, proclaimed through the Spirit, embodied in Christ Jesús, brings lifechanging conviction with it. Let us never forget the very incarnation itself, where the Word became flesh and carne to dwell among us. The transformation that comes as a result of this personal touch is what regeneration is all about, when the letter of the Word and the Word as Christ Himself are written on the heart of the hearer.
The Scriptures, the touch, the presence, and the love of Christ lived out— these combined become the sword of the Spirit to break down the armored resistance of a culture at war with His truth. For ultimately, all pursuits apart from God lead to alienation and loneliness that only the touch of Christ can resolve.
The Christian, therefore, stands in the position to proclaim and live the truth that reaches the mind, stirs the heart, and purifies the imagination. The regenerative power of the Word is what makes it indispensable to every culture and every generation in every century. That's why we are told that we don't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Imagine a generation that is "intellectually uncapped, morally unzippered and volitionally uncurbed." Consider how the beauty and truth of the gospel can transform people bearing each of these descriptions.
2. What elements become the sword of the Spirit to break down the armored resistance of a culture at war with God's truth?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. How did the regenerative power of the Scriptures and the love of Christ ñrst change your life? Thank God for the gracious work He has done and is doing in your life.
2. God's Word is "a light shining in a dark place." Read 1 John 3:19-22 and invite God's Word, Christ Himself, to shine His light and love in every córner of
your life.
MAN OF SORROWS
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. .. . We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
ISAIAH 53:3-4, 6
rosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in ñbre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things."- Those are the words of the famed pleasure seeker Oscar Wilde. In his De Profundis, written in prison, he spoke with profound earnestness about how much sorrow had taught him. He went on to add, "Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do."
As I reflect on those words, I take note first of the one who wrote them. A life of pain was the furthest thing from Oscar Wilde's mind when he made his choices.
In that sense, none of us ever really chooses sorrow. But I take note of something else in his words: his claim is bold. He is not merely confessing an idea written across his worldview, but one he insists is written across the world. Sorrow is holy ground, he says, and those who do not learn to walk there know nothing of what living means.
What he means at the very least is that some of life's most sacred truths are learned in the midst of sorrow. He learned, for example, that raw, unadulterated pleasure for pleasure's sake is never a fulfilling pleasure. Violation of the sacred in the pursuit of happiness is not truly a source of happiness. In fact, it kills happiness because it can run roughshod over many a victim. Pleasure that profanes is pleasure that destroys.
Sorrow, on the other hand, while never pursued, comes into one's life and
compels us to see our own finitude and frailty. It demands of us seriousness and tenderness if we are to live life the way it is meant to be lived. One of the most important things sorrow does is to show us what it needs and responds to. Wilde said it himself: sorrow "is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain."
Of all the descriptions given about Jesús, there is one that unabashedly stands out to confront us. It is a description uttered by the prophet Isaiah, prodding mind and heart at once:
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
Whether holding glimpses of global suffering or personal pain and loss, Isaiah offers a fitting description to reflect upon. Indeed, he goes on to prophesy in verse 5 of Jesús, But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Maybe you are at a time in your life when hurt is writ large npon your thoughts.
Jesús is not unacquainted with your pain. In fact. He draws near particularly with a hand of love. Your wound may still bleed for a while to remind you of your weakness. But He can help carry the pain to carry you in strength. This could indeed be holy ground for you. It most certainly was for Him.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean to say that sorrow is holy ground?
2. What does the prophet Isaiah tell us about the person and ministry of Jesús
and the response He would encounter during His life on earth?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. Have you found that life's most sacred truths are learned in the midst of sorrow? How might this perspective change your understanding of suffering or minister to someone you love?
2. Spend time praying for Jesús' peace and healing in your life and for others in need.
CASTING STONES
When they kept on questioning him, he . .. said to them, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the ñrst to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones ñrst, until only Jesús was left. . .. "Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesús declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
JOHN 8:7-11
et him who is without sin . . . cast the first stone." This thought is often given as rationale for casting any type of public moralizing aside. Evidently, we cannot completely shake off our bequest from a Christian worldview. Ironically, this moral conviction is often given with the reminder that all morality is a private matter and not for public enforcement. But if all moral convictions are a private matter, why is this very conviction itself not kept private too? Why is it publicly enjoined?
When I ask citers of this verse from John 8 if they are aware of the context in which these words were uttered, they often don't know. One said it had to do with the woman in adultery. I asked if he was aware of what prompted Jesús' imperative and to whom He aimed those words. There was silence. Significantly, the entire confrontation carne about because the Pharisees were seeking to trap
Jesús into either explicitly defending the law of Moses or implicitly overruling it. The whole scenario was a ploy, not to seek out the truth of a moral law, but to trap Jesús.
Fascinatingly, Jesús exposed their own spiritual bankruptcy by showing them that at the heart of the law is God's very character. That is, there is a spiritual essence that precedes moral injunctions. So when we vociferously demand that only the one without sin may cast the first stone, we also need to grant credence to God's character in numerous other pronouncements.
But for some, sin is not even a viable category. This selective use of Scripture is the very game the questioners of Jesús were playing. When the law is quoted while the reality of sin is denied, self-aggrandizing motives can override character. Thus, in our spiritually amputated world, the art of obscuring truth has become a Science in courtroom and political theatrics.
Herein lies what I believe is the crucial death of our characters. There is no transcendent context within which to discuss moral theory. Just as words, in order to have meaning, must point beyond themselves to a commonly understood real existence, so also must reality point beyond itself to a commonly accepted essence. Otherwise reality has no moral quotient and moral meaning dissolves into the subjective, rendering it beyond debate. Only the transcendent can unchangingly provide ñxed moral worth.
But this death of the transcendent comes with a two-edged sword, both for the skeptic and the Christian alike. Yes, the law has moral valué, but not as a means for shrewd lawyers to play deadly word games, minimize immorality, and kill the truth. At the same time the law has spiritual valué so that we do not destroy the truly repentant individual. The grace of God abounds to the worst in our midst. Hidden in the odious nature of our failures is the scandalous secret of God's forgiveness. When the prodigal returned, the anger he faced was not from his father but from his older brother, who failed to understand the marvelous grace of his father.
Throughout history, God's way of dealing with the reckless has disclosed how dramatic are His ways. We must allow for such possibilities. "This son of mine was dead and is alive again," shouted the prodigal's father (Luke 15:24). Death lay in the wanderings of the passions and the seriousness of wrongdoing. Life was spelled in true repentance to retum and "sin no more." But let us take note: forgiveness is offered in full recognition of the heinousness of what is being forgiven.
On the contrary, when words, consequences, and transcendent contexts have died, a pigsty awaits. Only if we remember our Father's address can we know where to return for forgiveness and love. But if we insist upon arguing as quickwitted political power-mongers or legal wordsmiths with no spiritual context, we may kill both law and love. This, I am afraid, is the abyss over which we often hover.
Yet I am confident that as precipitous as the edge seems, God has always been in the business of rescue. The truth is that as human beings we all fall short. Our only hope is in God's ways, through which forgiveness and responsibility come in balance. There is indeed another bridge, one on which a body was broken so that a path was made that we might cross over and live. In that cross lie both judgment and mercy. The Judge of all the earth cannot be fooled by shades of meaning, ñor was Christ obliterated by the shadows of death.
Thanks be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesús Christ, who is our help and hope in ages past and years to come.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
í. "At the heart of the law is God's very character. . . . There is a spiritual essence that precedes moral injunctions." Explain how this is trae.
2. What does the parable of the prodigal son and his father reveal about the heart of God?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. If your life were cast in the pages of Scripture, what character most resembles you apart from Christ's forgiveness—the questioning Pharisee, fearful adulterous woman, prodigal son, or angry brother?
2. Where do you need Christ's rescue today?
SCANDAL OF THE CROSS
Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ cruciñed: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
1 CORINTHIANS 1:22-25
hat a striking verse in the New Testament in which the apostle Paul refers to the cross of Jesús Christ as foolishness to the Greek and a stumbling block to the Jew. One can readily understand why he would say that. After all, to the Greek mind, sophistication, philosophy, and learning were exalted pursuits. How could
One cruciñed possibly spell knowledge?
To the Jewish mind, on the other hand, there was a cry and a longing to be free.
In their history, they had been attacked by numerous powers and often humiliated by occupying forces. Whether it was by the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans, Jerusalem had been repeatedly plundered and its people left homeless. What would the Hebrews have wanted more than someone who could take up their cause and altogether repel the enemy? How could a Messiah who was cruciñed possibly be of any help?
To the Greek, the cross was foolishness. To the Jew, it was a stumbling block.
What is it about the cross of Christ that so roundly defies everything that power relishes? Crucifixión was humiliating and excruciatingly painful, so much so that the Romans who specialized in the art of torture assured their own citizenry that a Román could never be cruciñed.
May I add that for this among other reasons, our Muslim friends consider the cross a sign of weakness and henee bearing no resemblance to power. "How can the God of all creation be so humiliated?" a Muslim questioner once asked me.
Yet, when the Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ was shown in the
United Arab Emirates to packed audiences, many would walk out wiping away tears and saying, "We had no idea how He had been treated."
Should that not give us pause? Think of it: humiliation and agony. To what end?
Why such barbarism? This was the path Jesús chose with which to reach out for you and for me.
You see, this thing we cali sin, but which we so tragically minimize, breaks the grandeur for which we were created. It brings indignity to our essence and pain to our existence. It separates us from God. Someone has rightly said that the worst effect of sin is shown, not in suffering or in bodily defacement, but rather in "the dis-crowned faculties, the unworthy loves, the low ideáis, the brutalized and the enslaved spirit."
Think of that, phrase by phrase:
Discrowned faculties : all the brilliance and Creative genius we have within humanity, and yet we stoop to such base pursuits. Unworthy loves : practices we onght to despise, yet we stoop to such depraved pursuits (pornography, violence, hate, profanity). Low ideáis : we ought to set our visión for things that are noble, yet we spend time and effort on the ignoble.
The brutalized and enslaved spirit : We sink deeper and deeper into bad habits till we enslave ourselves. This is the worst form of slavery of which we so seldom speak.
On the way to the cross two thousand years ago, Jesús took the ultimate indignity, the ultimate debasement, the ultimate penalty, and the ultimate pain to bring us back to the dignity of a relationship with God and the healing of our souls. Will you remember that this was done for you and receive His gift?
You will then discover that it is sin that is foolishness, not the provisión. Our greatest weakness is not an enemy from without but one from within. Our own weak wills cause us to stumble. But Jesús Christ frees us from the foolishness of sin and the weakness of our selves.
This is the very reason the apostle Paul went on to say that he preached Jesús Christ as one crucified, which was both the power of God and the wisdom of God. This is not scandalous. What is scandalous is that we do not see our own folly and failure. This is the wisdom of God correcting our folly and the grace of
God overcoming our egos. This is the love of God overriding our hate.
Come to the cross in these days given for our contemplation and find out His power and His wisdom. Paul was won by the resurrection, but he made an understanding of the cross his pursuit. He was of Jewish stock and the product of Greek learning. He realized all of that was nothing when he understood how the cross was the profound answer to our foolish ways of thinking and living. Next time you see a cross, remember it is God's wisdom for our failures.