Chapter 10
Hold Tight to the Precious
*To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, every one who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed,” John 8:31-36.
*It is not in our nature to read verses the way they ought to be read. All of the modern western literature is based around long explanations and exaggerations to make a point. The word of God is terse. It must be read, and meditated upon, and reread, and prayed over, and then we must cross-reference, and then reread, and then meditate once again, and then we might have something to talk about. God seems to pack so much in such a little space, who can train their minds to read all of what is said?
*The way that I study is by asking questions. Why is sin bad? We know that sin is bad because it offends God. Why does it offend God? It offends God because it is not how He made things to be. How did He make things to be? God made things to be pure and innocent. What is purity? God is the very definition of purity. It is 100% pure, or it is not pure. God created this world and called it “good.” When a perfect God calls His creation good, it can mean that it is unadulterated, unmixed with bad, genuine, pure, clean, holy, and right. The man reaps what he has sown. He isn’t always striving to earn enough to live, and then paying out his earnings to taxes and lawyers and government and property owners and banks and everyone else. It is good. It is right. It is the way things are supposed to be.
*So, then, what is sin? Sin is the absence of good. It is following the way things are instead of trying to live out of the way things were made. It is living in a way that is opposite to what God had established and intended from the start. What is sin? It is a power. It isn’t so much about moral failing as it is a condition. It’s a fallen nature. It’s a fallen generation. It’s a good world gone bad. Sin is all around us. It is in the air we breathe. David said, “I drank it down from my mother’s milk.”
*If this is the case, then we can stop preaching sin. We can stop speaking to people and addressing sin as something that you do. We need to stop. It isn’t how God intended. Our very speaking of sin as some sort of outward failing instead of an inward condition and power that binds us is sin. If our Gospel starts with Genesis 3 and sin, then our conclusions will also be skewed slightly. Our Gospel will start with this world being a messed up place, and our lives are messed up lives, and it will end with us leaving this world and getting new bodies and new lives and new purpose. If our Gospel starts with “In the beginning God created…” then our Gospel must then include that we weren’t made for evil and corruption, and it won’t end with us leaving, but instead with God redeeming this world, and bringing Heaven and His glory here with us.
*But lets not stop there. Our services that we hold where the whole thing is set up to get a good sermon, but to not have to hear from God or experience Him personally and communally, is wrong. Even when the preaching is godly preaching and we can feel the presence of God, it does not confirm that God is really pleased and desires that we keep it the way we have it.
*What about John 8:31-36? Isn’t that a marvelous text? We see sin as a power that deceives. It is a binding force to slavery of a master that we know not. The master is not sin, but the author of sin. Sin itself is only a means to bind us to the author of death: the devil. Sin and death kiss. You cannot have the one without the other. Death is not something that happens sometime at the end of your life. It is a daily choice to live or to die. Either you will pick life, and do things according to how God made them to be, or you will choose death and follow how things are presented to us in this current age.
*Death itself is a condition. What comes after our life (as a physical death) is only a manifestation of an inward reality. Death is the absence of good. It is the absence of purity. It is the absence of holiness. It is the absence of God. Therefore the second death is not so much a punishment as it is reaping what you have sown. If you sow to sin and death, you reap it. God will not be mocked.
*Heaven and Hell are topics that are gushing with this kind of thinking. What if someone unsaved got into Heaven? There is only purity, good, righteousness, holiness, love, joy: God. Will it not be Hell to them? For someone who has corrupted their souls by defiling their character in a way only to know evil, corruption, hatred, and mixture, is there any hope that they will enjoy Heaven? What makes Heaven if it isn’t God bringing all things back together in the way they were always intended to be? If we aren’t a people of that kind of mentality and lifestyle here and now, then we aren’t going to be a part of it in the next age to come. Hell is the overflow of our personal choices. Hell is what is granted to the people who have chosen to continually create Hell for others here on this earth during this age.
*Heaven is pure. It is blamelessness. It is good. It is God. For us to make it into Heaven, we need to be these things now: here on this earth. We need to be creating Heaven in our lives and the lives of others. If, at the end of the age, God were to purify, and try all things by the fire, what if we made it into Heaven, but only by the skin of our teeth? What if you look around at all the saints of the ages, and you see them in fullness and in complete joy, but you are left being a shell, because the rest has been burnt out? What if in order to make it into Heaven, God must burn out all of the wickedness and corruption? For those who have given themselves to such things, what will be left of them to make it in?
*This is the second death. It is a final harvest of what we have sown. We have sown sin, and we will reap death. There can be no other option. But the righteous… To them will be granted the Kingdom. They will have everlasting triumph and joy. Men will grab hold of the hem of their garments and say, “Take us to your God, for you know Him.” There will be a day when we will cry no more. There is an age coming, and a Kingdom that has already been established, where the men and women of this world will again be set free from oppression. The ox will no longer be muzzled. Our robes, though they are as scarlet red, they will be as white as snow.
*This is Heaven. This is the promise. This is what Jesus is saying. This is freedom. This is the truth that will set us free.
*The nature of truth is to be freeing. Even though it is true to say that Jesus is the Truth, and that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and God the Father is the author/creator of Truth, Jesus was not simply telling us that He will set us free. Truth, by its nature, is freeing. To embrace truth in its entirety is freedom. When we can accept reality, and we no longer have to run for the darkness to hide any longer, then we are free. God intends that we are true. In being true, we are free.
*Yet, Jesus also does say that He is the Son in who will set us free. I don’t want to take away from this either. Jesus Christ is our Savior. We are not saviors unto ourselves. It is in Him that we find freedom. It is in Him that we find truth, for without Him, there is no truth. All these things work hand in hand. Truth is revealed in the Son, and in that we find freedom. In finding freedom, we cling to truth, and find more freedom. In our being set free from the oppression of this world, we are made true, and we bring freedom to others. It is through Christ, and Christ in us, that we bring freedom to this world. We create Heaven on earth. That is how God intended it from the beginning: God on earth with His creation.
*Am I allowed to ask the question of why so many people desire and strive and plead to be sent up, when God seems to be desperately trying to come down? It is our desire to escape this world; it is God’s desire to dwell on it. Once again, this is the deception of sin. Sin has so deceived us that we think only in the context of carnality. We can’t escape flesh and blood and perceive the spiritual.
*It is my belief that the majority of the Church in America, and possibly all over the world, does not believe that we who are in Christ are spiritual beings. This is our falling short. Because we don’t believe that we are spiritual beings, we don’t seek spiritual answers, and we don’t preach spiritual messages, and even though everything seems to work out in our minds, and it is all rational, it doesn’t actually work. We preach on how to be free from sin, and it seems to make sense when we reason it out, and when we write it on paper. The problem comes when, as Oswald Chambers writes, “we put this to practical application.” When we try and live it out, we find that it is only a method and a cliché. There isn’t truly freedom in it.
*I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. All the sermons that are preached about “saying no to temptation and saying yes to Jesus” just don’t seem to work. They only take a man so far. But to go beyond that, we need truth in its deepest and most authentic meaning. Just as sin is a power, truth is a power. Sin binds us, but truth sets us free. Sin deceives us, but truth opens our eyes. They are opposing powers, because they come from opposing creators. And, I don’t care who wrote otherwise, or who said otherwise, God is greater than the devil. Truth is greater than sin. God is not losing. He is already victorious. It is finished. So, now walk in that freedom. Live from eternity.