Christ's Eternal Now

I came across the following while doing some research for my message on Sunday. Though I'm not using it for this message, it was too profound and stirring to me to let it sit in a file on my computer. So, I share it with you. Think about it, pray about it, and let God apply it to you heart.

From “Speaking My Mind” by Tony Campolo:

I do not want to leave this discussion of what goes on with Christ suffering and cleansing us from our sin in His eternal now without pointing out that all of this should provide a great impetus for living the holy life. Every time I sin, at that very instant Jesus groans at Calvary. Even as I sin today, He experiences the agony of ingesting my sin into Himself in His eternal now, as He hangs spread eagle on the tree back there and then. This is why it says in Hebrews 6: 6 that when we sin, we crucify Him right now.

While spending a few days as the religious-emphasis-week speaker on the campus of a Christian college, I talked with a senior who was quite cavalier about the sins in his life. He told me about having an affair with a married woman. Then he said, “Whenever I commit sin, I remember that Jesus took the punishment for that sin back there on the cross.” In response, I said, “The next time you’re in bed having sex with your lover, I hope you can hear the screams of Jesus from the cross; because at that very moment Jesus is reaching across time and absorbing into His own body the very sin that you are committing there and then. The Jesus who hates sin becomes the sinner that you are. The innocent Jesus becomes the adulterer you are, because in His eternal now, He becomes everything about you that He hates.”

It's All Because of Us

It's Friday morning, it's grey and rainy, there's not a gas station within a few miles of my house that has gas, another bank has tanked, and the stock market is expected to take another dive. One would think that things are pretty bleak. And they are but, strangely, I don't feel bleak. A tad anxious, yes, but not bleak. I suppose that is in part because I realize that this isn't as bad as it may get and, secondly, I have a strange inner peace from God that encourages me to believe that, no matter how bad things may get, He will stay true to His word. In fact, what is unfolding around us is true to His word.

Here's what I mean. God is very aware of what is unfolding around me and what is unfolding is due in large part because of our selfishness, greed, and outright sin. His word tells us, directly and by example, that sin has consequences, it damages us and our world. I'm not so sure why we are so surprised at all these events when it seems to me that these events are the outcome of our choices.

I do believe that we will "fix" things - that's what we do - we pull our selves out of the messes we got ourselves into, only to turn around a little later and find ourselves in an equal mess. When all this financial stuff gets dealt with - and we're naive to believe that it will all come together in next week or two and we're naive to believe that this will be the fix that will "fix" it all, we'll probably find that we will wipe the sweat off our brow and say "that was a close one" and move on and not learn much from the experience. This crises has been brewing since the 90's and before because man is selfish, greedy, and sinful.

By the way, I did preach my message on greed last Sunday. I had no choice - to many things kept taking me in that direction, from a Bible study, discussions, world and US events, and even my devotional reading for the week. It was a hard message to preach because it really challenged me and where I was in my heart. People were responsive, appreciative, complimentary (is that a good thing?), and attentive. All I ask is that they be attentive, it's God that asks them, and me, to be responsive to His word.

Speaking of responsive, I think we live in a growing church culture that is uncomfortable with making a demonstrative response to challenges or invitations in a message. The altar seems to serve more as a decoration than a place of prayer and commitment. Why is that? For a while the altar served as a protective wall between the pastor and people but I removed that by coming down into the congregation when I preach. Which may cause some to ask, why doesn't the pastor use the pulpit to preach God's word? I have my theology and biases to why I don't but that's for another day.

Infection

I'm sitting on the couch this evening, listening/watching an old Genesis concert that I recorded on VH1Classic and downloading programs on my computer. My computer isn't the same computer that I was familiar with. It had a crises!

I know went the crises began - January 15 around 4:00 PM. I had received an email from someone I though I knew (I didn't) to go to a website and watch this hilarious video. I went to it and as I clicked on the video to start, a window popped up and then disappeared. I thought little of it until, after a few minutes, I started to get pop-ups every few minutes. I realized that I had gotten some type of ad-ware or spy-ware so I ran a program to get rid of it. It didn't. then I ran a virus scan and I realized I had some type of Trojan virus. So I had the anti-virus program take care of it. It didn't. For several days I kept working on the problem. Then my anti-virus program wouldn't work. My computer started to act up, sluggish, doing weird stuff. And pop-ups - they kept coming and some of them weren't what I would want popping up on a preacher's computer - they weren't pornographic but still rather risqué. I was worried about whether my computer would work for Sunday (1/27) (power point). It did, thankfully.

Anyway, that Sunday evening I purchased another type of anti-virus/spyware-adware/registry repair program. Ran it and I was thrilled because it was working. I was amazed at how many Trojan and worm viruses I had. Then my computer froze on me so I had to shut it off and restart it but wouldn't restart. I kept getting a blue screen that told me I had a fatal error and a bunch of other stuff. So, that Monday, I took it to the computer hospital. Five days and $187 later, I had it in my lap. I turned it on and there it was, a different computer than the one I once had. Thank the Lord they were able to back up my hard drive, reinstall Windows and get rid of all the viruses.

All this got me thinking about sin. You know, it really doesn't take much sin to get us messed up. We may think we can handle stuff - things we know aren't good for us but we rationalize our behaviors or choices. But the "little sins" have a way of moving us to other types of "little sins" that eventually join forces and we have lost our selves to the control of sin.

I spent the day today at a conference on sexual ethics and boundaries. Again, this was driven home for me, how easy it is to get pulled away from what we know is right and proper to giving into behavior that is hurtful, to ourselves, to our family, to the person/people involved, and the church. "Little sins" are really good at causing us to come up with rationalizations for our behaviors. With the letter "A" being a walk of commitment to Christ and holiness and "Z" being walking in the total opposite direction, it's easy to rationalize our choices as "well, I'm still closer to "A" than to "Z". The interesting thing is, if we're not moving towards "A" then we're moving toward "Z".

I've heard people say, "I'm a sinner saved by grace" but I'm not sure they really believe they're really "sinners." Think about it - most of us haven't committed a bank robbery or raped a person or molested a child or beat our spouses or killed a person - we've just told lies, had lustful thoughts, "borrowed" stuff from work, been hateful to someone, been unforgiving, had racist feelings, gossiped...shall I go on? Remember what Jesus said about some of this? "You know the next commandment pretty well, too: 'Don't go to bed with another's spouse.' But don't think you've preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices—they also corrupt." (Matthew 5:27-28, MSG) I think it's a pretty safe bet that his statement here can and should be applied to my incomplete list of "little sins." I haven't found any lists in God's Word that says, "these are the big sins and over here, these are the little sins. Don't do the biggies but the littles are OK." I know there isn't those type of lists because I've looked. The only lists I've found have them all listed together as...SINS.

All these thoughts because I went someplace that I wasn't sure about to see something I wasn't sure about from someone who wasn't who I thought he was that ended up crashing my computer. Which I know, from the experience of my own life and the lives of some people I have been acquainted with, is what happens to us when we try to dance on the edge of sin - we will eventually crash - but even before we do, we're infected and things start to slowly get messed up inside of us.

I am a sinner saved by grace. I couldn't do it myself - I just messed things up all the more. But Christ, well, he has an amazing way of fixing us up, working on our infections, pop-ups, and crashes.

I think it appropriate to close these thoughts by encouraging you to turn to the thoughts from the Apostle Paul on the subject. He spends the first 8 chapters talking about much the same thing. Those chapters have a way of turning me back towards "A" and away from "Z." Of course, the whole book is worth a good read.

It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

Roman 7:21-25 (MSG)