“Jesus said to them [the religious leaders], ‘I tell you the
truth, tax collectors and prostitutes will go ahead of you into the kingdom of
God!” (Matt 21:31)
I’m struck by how some of “fiery” preachers would scare away
prostitutes. They would have terrified and shamed the Samaritan woman, who Jesus met at
the well (John 4:4-26). Unlike Jesus, they would have straight off condemned her for cohabitating with a man and
for having had five husbands previously trying to get her to repent out of fear of
hell’s fires. They end where Jesus began, such as with the woman caught in adultery, whom Jesus showed intervening love, grace, and mercy before telling her not to sin anymore (John 8:1-11). Strange how Scripture shows us that Jesus approached even the “worst”
of sinners radically different than those who say they represent him today mainly by preaching a messages of
moral rectitude and condemnation of "sinner". Then they have the audacity to call "sinners" (addressing most of their regular attendees) to repent by quoting from John 3:16: "For this is the way God loved the
world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him
will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through
him".
This blog was partly inspired by a video message from Paul Washer that Caleb posted the other day. In the past I have come across many such videos by Paul Washer
that inspired me. He points fingers where Jesus did, not the “sinners”, but the false
shepherds and false prophets who profess to represent the God of Scripture by
their messages of condemnation. They reveal God as mainly a Relentless Judge out
for revengeful justice against “sinners”. Jesus didn’t go around condemning “sinners”
for being imperfect humans, but He instead recognized how “sinners” like all
humanity apart from His redeeming-love are under the dominion of Satan (the
Evil One, the Tempter, the Slanderer, the
Deceiver, the Marketing-King of Sin City). Christ showed “sinners” love
by first offering to set them free from the Oppressor of their soul (the inflictor
of depression, anxiety, fear, regret, sorrow, hopelessness, lovelessness,
stress, addiction, etc.). Then He called them to follow Him in setting other “sinners”
free from the grip of what controls their soul when they chase after imaginary possible
futures that never quench the thirst of their soul for affection, belonging,
acceptance, purpose, etc. The real war is not found in “correcting” sinful
behavior, but the war lies internally in the heart of a person. Hence, we who profess to follow Christ should carefully take note that: Christ did NOT
come to establish a Moral Police Force.
Jesus called people to follow Him and no longer be subject
by the Deceiver’s yoke that “promises” to fulfill our dreams apart from the
God-relationship. Jesus began with showing “sinners” the unconditional love, faithful
mercy, and persistent grace of God that leads “sinners” to repentance. “Or do
you have contempt for the wealth of his kindness, forbearance, and patience,
and yet do not know that God’s kindness leads you to repentance” (Rom 2:4)? God’s
wrath is poured out against false shepherds who twist the message of Christ (like the Pharisees), and those who after being
delivered return willingly under the World’s yoke of “working to be loved” and “selling
one’s soul to be loved”, even after they have experienced the liberating love
of God (self-righteous hypocrites). His accusation against them is not for returning to a lifestyle of sin,
but because they pridefully think they do not need to repent or turn back to Him, but
think they can re-live the life of spiritual adultery without the eternal consequences of falling
away from their First Love (their Maker), who gave His life for them (they are like the foolish virgins in Jesus' parable in Matt 25).
There are countless “sinners” crying out for unconditional
love, mercy, and grace of God, but many church leaders only show them cheap grace (devoid of the Spirit's power)
that can’t set "sinners" free from depression, addiction, sin’s grip, etc., or they
condemn them as “sinners” each Sunday and declare they must change their ways, because God is a Holy God. They horde God’s grace for themselves as self-righteous
and keep grace from the most needy sinners, who want deliverance, but who recognize time and time again that they are not
in themselves able to fulfill the demands of salvation put on them by iterant preachers who shame them. They do not know God’s
love that would offer them love in spite of their sins. They lack the revelation that their Maker still want them to
be His beloved, even before requiring them to change their ways.
Our Creator's love alone changes the ways of His wayward creation, and so His love seeks out the
"sinner" who will dare to believe that God loves them and He desires them to be in an eternal relationship with them EVEN while
being a sinner before they have been set free by His love. Many people want freedom
but they don’t know it’s available to them or think they are too lost to be
saved or to unholy to be loved by God or it’s too late to repent or they are
simply scared by the Angry God the preachers preach about. They do not know
the hope we have in Christ, because they’ve been shown a false condemning
Christ by believers who themselves remain imprisoned by Satan’s puppeteering.
How can those in bondage set free others in bondage? If
those who go to church are kept in bondage by their leader’s doctrines and
religious rituals, then no wonder they remain ineffective in living holy lives
or in carrying out the Great Commission. Only the power of God's love flowing through the Spirit sets humanity free to live for God. The fingers should be pointed at the
real Task-Masters who are controlled by Religious Spirits. God wants those who
will be His instruments of war against these spirits that appears as “angels of
light,” for they have removed His glory from among those who call upon the name
of One, for they do not really know Him, given they have replaced Him with a caricature
of a pagan angry god like Zeus. On Sundays they lift up a God for a few hours who is not the Bridegroom, and so they do not live like the Bride of God by committing themselves 24/7 to Him. They have made church buildings filled with
unclean spirits, of self-righteousness, religious anxiety, condemnation/ shame,
half-heartedness, spiritlessness, etc., like a prison that keeps people’s religiousness closed behind four walls
bound by paralyzing fear.
Jesus has, is, and will continue to go to war against these
spirits that separate people from the true realities of the grace of the
All-Powerful Spirit of God, who sheds true love abroad in our hearts. He alone
makes us holy and righteous by His loving embrace. He alone makes us holy by
fresh baptisms of Heavenly Fires of Sanctification driven by the Consuming
Fires of He who is Agape-Love. He is the true Light that drives out the
darkness of spiritual adultery. How can the church’s darkness of despair drive
out the darkness of hopelessness and lovelessness that haunts the “sinner”. How
can Satan drive out Satan? That is what many churches have become today. The
only hope is for those who say they follow Jesus to be caught on Fire by His
Heart of Liberating Passion, the heart of a Bridegroom who came to earth in
search of His faithless Bride seeking to win her back.
God wants a Warrior Bride with His fire in her eyes. He
wants an equally-yoked lover filled with His love that sets the “sinners” free
to be His partners in destroying Satan’s works of counterfeit love, which
separate humanity from their true First Love, their Maker. He created us to be
His eternal beloveds. He is coming again not primarily to judge the world, but
to marry His Bride. He is coming back for a Wedding. This is His heart’s
desire, not wrath and destruction. These are means to the end of an Eternal
Honeymoon with those who are willing to give themselves to being His beloved in
a Holy Kingdom of Heaven, where death or sin never enters.
He wants his beloved to know He wants to ravish her and make
her His pride and joy. He wants to woo her from the false faithless lovers who
betrayed her. He is the Prince Charming girded up for war seeking to rescue her
and woo her in hopes that she will bind herself to Him forever. He is passionate for Spirit-to-spirit
communion with humanity. He wants to
enrapture us into His sanctifying love that changes who we are into His
likeness, so we become one with Him, as a husband and wife become one in soul
and spirit. He is a Consuming Fire of Agape-Love and He seeks those He can
share the fire of His essence with, forever.
Anyone who has read Revelations 19-21 will realize that it is
mainly about a wedding banquet and the new heaven/ new earth, and not mainly
about judgment and damnation. Yes the latter is there, but the focus at the end
of His love letter (Scripture) to us reveals the ultimate purpose of God’s
heart. This is the reason why He died and will come again to marry the “virgins”
who have by His sanctifying spirit been made ready to eternally live with Him
in His kingdom, as His betrothed. He comes again to marry His beloved and spend
eternity with her. So many have forgotten or overshadowed these revelations
that are throughout Scripture. The Bible is the Greatest of Love Stories. We
have traded the God of Passionate Love for a Distant Tyrant God, a Task-Master
of Morality, a Fierce Judge, or a God in our image (who one worships only because of
their selfishness to get what they want out of Him, like a genie in the bottle). He never was any of these before creation or the fall, yet
both before creation and after the end of this world He will remain Agape-love
(1 John 4:8-16). That is His Essence.
Humanity, especially in western churches, have lost sight of God’s true essence, therefore they have lost their essence as His Beloved. They no longer have the Revelation of who He really is, who Christ revealed the Father to be. He is the Bridegroom. He wants us to be filled with His Spirit that transforms us into living as His Bride should, and to drive out the religious spirits that quench His holy Spirit and cause those who call on Him to worship at altars of religious show and rituals that leave people drunk on the worldly self-righteousness but not drunk in the Holy Spirit. He has come to betroth humanity not put us under the weight of self-righteous morality or religious passionlessness or a religion of self-centered prosperity. He wants to see us on fire with the Fire in His eyes to win our hearts and have us bind ourselves completely to Him. He wants to make us His faithful bride. He wants to strip us of our worldly rags of selling ourselves short and put on us the royal wedding garments purchased by His blood (Rev 5:9). He wants to erase the pain caused by every idolatrous false lover. He wants us to forget them and have eyes for Him alone. He wants to walk with us intimately before commanding us to live rightly, for He knows that only intimacy with Him leads to holiness.
Only as our First Love, can we, as His beloved, walk with Him along the path of liberating "sinners" by the open arms of life-transforming grace. Only in the arms of Divine Romance can we become like the God revealed in Scripture who is holy. Of whom we read saying: "How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel?... I have had a change of heart! All my tender compassions are aroused! I cannot carry out my fierce anger! I cannot totally destroy Ephraim! Because I am God, and not man – the Holy One among you – I will not come in wrath" (Hos 11:8-9)! His love leads us to repentance, and our sanctifying relationship with Him leads us into true righteous and holy living. He wants our hearts before our obedience, for true obedience must flow from the heart. True holiness flows from the Spirit-to-spirit intimacy of the God-relationship, whereby we become like He who is Agape-love by living a life of agape-love that sets the captives free (Gal 5).
Hence, genuine believers in Christ are commanded: "But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith, by praying in the Holy Spirit, maintain yourselves in the love of God, while anticipating the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings eternal life. And have mercy on those who waver; save others by snatching them out of the fire; have mercy on others, coupled with a fear of God, hating even the clothes stained by the flesh" (Jude 1:20-23)
May we never misunderstand the fear of God, in such a way that nullifies His essence as Agape-love. Neither let us misunderstand the love of God, in such a way that nullifies His desire for a sanctified Bride made holy by the Spirit. We should fear God as I fear being unfaithful to my wife, not because I fear her wrath. Rather, I fear not just because I fear disappointing the one I care so deeply for, who I made a perpetual covenant of unconditional loyalty in my youth, but because I fear the severing of our oneness and our intimacy, because I know I would lose a part of myself. I fear grieving God as my beloved even more, because without Him I lose my whole self. Without Him, I am a walking slave of worldly-desires and bound to serve task-masters that will betray me in the end.
1 John 4:16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that
God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in
Him. 4:17 By this love is
perfected with
us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as
Jesus is, so
also are we in this world. 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out
fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been
perfected in love. 4:19 We
love because
he loved us first.
Passages demonstrating the Wedding Motif in Scripture
Matthew 25:1 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 25:2 Five of the virgins were foolish, and five were wise. 25:3 When the foolish ones took their lamps, they did not take extra olive oil with them. 25:4 But the wise ones took flasks of olive oil with their lamps. 25:5 When the bridegroom was delayed a long time, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. 25:6 But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look, the bridegroom is here! Come out to meet him.’ 25:7 Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 25:8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, because our lamps are going out.’ 25:9 ‘No,’ they replied.‘There won’t be enough for you and for us. Go instead to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ 25:10 But while they had gone to buy it, the bridegroom arrived, and those who were ready went inside with him to the wedding banquet. Then the door was shut. 25:11 Later, the other virgins came too, saying, ‘Lord, lord! Let us in!’ 25:12 But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I do not know (intimate knowing) you!’ 25:13 Therefore stay alert, because you do not know the day or the hour.
Revelation 2:1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write the following... 2:4 But I have this against you: You have departed from your First Love! 2:5 Therefore, remember from what high state you have fallen and repent... if not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place – that is, if you do not repent.
Revelation 19:6 Then I heard what
sounded like the voice of a vast throng, like the roar of many waters and like
loud crashes of thunder. They were shouting: “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the All-Powerful, reigns!19:7 Let us
rejoice and
exult and give Him glory, because the wedding celebration of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready.19:8 She was
permitted to be dressed in bright, clean, fine linen” (for the fine
linen is the righteous deeds of the saints).19:9 Then the angel said to me,
“Write the following: Blessed are those who are invited to the banquet at the wedding celebration of
the Lamb!” He also said to me, “These are the true words of God.”
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