The Jesus Lens/jlqa6

Regretfully, the first question didn't get recorded, so let me kind of pose it here and then we'll get to the answer. Someone asked from the notes on session 18 under number 3, redefining terms in the New Testament context, and just say we hadn't covered those, and could I go over those briefly? Yeah, as you noticed, I'm not following my notes, but I did talk about redefining our terms in the New Testament context. Judgment I think I've already talked about a lot, not seeing it as God punishing but God making right. Rath is one of those things I've talked a lot about in the transition series, if you haven't heard it. We've seen Rath as God's unrequited anger that's in opposition to God loving or caring about us, and if God is love, then Rath is an expression of his love. It's not this unrequited anger, I've got to blow up the world. I've defined Rath this way. Rath is the full weight of God's being brought against that which destroys the object of his affection. I wish I had that on the slide, but I'll say it again. It is the full weight of God's being brought against that which destroys the object of his affection. So God's Rath, yeah, it is the antidote to sin. It is what destroys sin. And when God's Rath breaks out on the Old Testament, yes, people die. We don't have the capacity to live in God's Rath for even a second, it kills us. But Jesus had that, because being perfect humanity, Jesus can be on the cross and hold our sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He wasn't just guilty of our sins. He became sin itself. So this love of the Father, this consuming Rath that isn't about destroying Jesus, it was about consuming sin in the likeness of sinful flesh, which is Romans 8 language. It comes in and our Rath is held in Jesus for probably the three hours of the cross. Now if it takes three hours of Rath to cure sin in us, what hope had you of ever being your own Redeemer? You had none. You were never going to redeem you, not on your best day. What Jesus does is He holds our sin in the presence of God's Rath until that Rath consumes sin in the likeness of sinful flesh. It's the chemotherapy. My best friend died of melanoma a few years ago because it just was beyond their ability to heal it. We've got chemotherapy that cures melanoma. The problem is, because chemotherapy is poison, right? It kills the host before it kills the disease, it kind of makes it worthless. They give him the most aggressive treatment they could give him and not kill him. It took him right to the brink of death and then had to pull him off and it didn't kill the melanomas. I'll end up killing him a year later. What we have on the cross is Jesus saying, no, you can't do this. So I will do it because he never sinned. Here's why the innocent victim has to die. It's only the soul that sins that dies. So Rath couldn't kill Jesus. He could hold our sin and the love of God condemning that sin. Now, God could just waived his magic wand and whatever, but these are real realities to God. This is real stuff. Sin is a reality that had to be consumed in the sun. And by consuming it, he sets us free from it. So Rath becomes a different thing. Obligation is not a word often used in the Old Testament, but it's that sense of New Testament principle and law versus following the Spirit. We've talked about that some. Condemnation and shame. Let me combine those two together because there's a lot of condemnation in the Old Covenant. There's a lot of condemnation in the life of a believer who's trying to live religiously. There is no condemnation in the life of the believer as far as God's concerned and as far as you will be concerned once you really realize what God accomplished for you on the cross. That's the one thing the cross totally takes away that Romans 8 makes absolutely clear. There is therefore now no condemnation. There's no fear, no shame of God. Those things, even though they were somewhat used in the Old Testament and even I think with people today, people outside of Christ have a sense of shame or guilt about what they're doing, that in some sense retards them from doing what they're doing. That's not a bad thing. I'm not for all about removing shame in the world, but shame, what it doesn't do is it doesn't draw you into who God is. So when people get close to Jesus, what you're going to notice about Jesus in the Gospel, he is never exacerbating anyone's shame, even someone who doesn't know him yet. It's the love he demonstrates toward the woman at the well, toward the woman caught in adultery, toward Zacchaeus. It's the love he demonstrates. He invites them into a relationship and they don't have a clue who he is. They don't know he's the God of the universe. And so there's no condemnation or shame that serves God's work in the world. It's freeing people from it. It's lifting it off of them that opens the door for them to know the Father we know. Make sense? Okay. I appreciated your old covenant, new covenant chart. That was helpful. Going from clergy to everyone. Yay. It seems to me, though, that if we do that or when we do that or what the new covenant says about that, it's just so essential that it sort of adds everyone within community. In other words, I don't know that I'm, I would be, one thing that clergy helps with in some sense is we're all at such different places on the journey and we all have different gifts and we all have different sense of who we are and our relationship with God. Sure. Or some of us still carrying that deep shame even though we've been there and everything else. And it just, it seems to me, you know, I have such a tendency as part of this individualistic culture to want to, you know, just have gotten me. That's it. That's enough. That's all good. But I know in my own brokenness and because I'm on the journey or whatever with Christ, I need, need community. And that seems to be a big thing Jesus is assuming because he isn't a group culture and also teaching that we need each other. He has the 12. He has, you know, teaches so much about how we are to live with each other and that just seems so essential. And I mean, of course, the rest of the New Testament sort of fleshes that out. Say something about that or maybe I'm off here. No, we've talked about before and it's obviously the first part of it that you've been able to catch. So that's fine. Let me go back. I think it's a good thing to repeat. I think what the New Testament offers is not clergy, even in the overseers and pastors and teachers and prophets and apostles, it actually saying to our brothers and sisters with functions that help people live out that responsibility. It's not people who take over that response. That's the problem. Follow me instead of following Christ. No, you need to follow Christ. You want my help? I'll help you. If I've got gifts to help, I'll help. So, and so Paul can talk about leadership terms. He talks about them 17 times, uses things like elder, pastor, teacher, prophet, whatever. 254 times he refers to people as fellow saints, brother and sister. The overwhelming thing is my relationship with you, even in this context, I'm teaching to some extent. Obviously it's a teaching role. I will benefit you best if I'm doing that as your brother, not if I'm doing that as someone who is closer to Jesus than you are. And then the aspect of community I think is this. I think so. The only scripture, even hints that community being a need is in 1 Corinthians 12 when it says the hand can't say the I don't need you because the body, you know that this is multiplicity of things. Overwhelmingly, the language of the New Testament is not you need body life. It's you get it. You get to have life. Community is irresistible. Religion is not. Religion needs the obligation of you must come here. Otherwise you're going to end up in this horrible place of error. I think that's totally wrong. Pleads to the wrong motivation in the human life. I think what anybody knows on this journey, when you're getting to know God as Father, you're getting a very narrow piece of who he is. And when you get around another brother or sister who's growing in that, they have a different piece and that enables your life in a wonderful way and it makes God richer to you. Then you want to talk to somebody else and you want to talk to someone else. I think community is the irresistible reality of somebody growing to know Father. That's why I don't think I have to put it in the context of need. If you think it's just Jesus in you, see what I know is you don't know Jesus very well yet and what you may need to start with is you need to get to know him better. Don't start with church because people don't know Jesus very well. I'll let people around me or the clergy be Jesus to me. Now you're on the wrong road. Now you've got the body of Christ as your idol. They're trying to fill up in you or you're not letting Jesus fill up in you. And I think people who do go on this journey, for sometimes they'll even say to me, Wayne, I can't find anybody around me on this journey and I feel so all alone. What I love is that no one ever likes that who's really on this journey. You don't like being alone. You want people's voices in your life. You don't want religious voices harassing you. You want relational voices who are on a similar journey of discovering who God is and the affection of the Father. And you want that encouragement. Wayne, you're loved when I'm in the middle of something going, man, I feel like God just abandoned me. The voice I want is not, well, you may deserve that. What are you doing wrong? I want the person to say, Wayne, you know you're loved. You know just the fact that you can't see it today doesn't change that reality. Those kinds of conversations are irresistible. But there may be a season, I tell us to people, it's just like when you get married in the Old Testament, you've got a year off. Go figure out how loved you are. Get that marriage set. I want people who come to Jesus. Not the first thing you need is body life. The first thing you need is it takes you a year or two. Go get to know Jesus. And then you'll open up to the body life as that irresistible grace that God gives that helps your journey not becomes the thing that replaces your journey. That's what I'm most aware of. Does that make sense? Makes sense. I think we're saying the same thing. I just don't like using the language of need. I like saying it's irresistible when you go who God is. When you're sitting at the table with Father and you look around the room and realize there are brothers and sisters at this table, that's all good. That's not okay. There are brothers and sisters here. I have to do this for God. Wow. I get to have other people. And I love it. I mean, we had a lunch yesterday with a bunch of people who were strangers to each other and got together. Great lunch. And there's just those moments where I go, man, I love the community God gives me. Even if it's just for an hour or two at lunch or back home with people that I walk more consistently with or people I visited as a group in Ireland, Sarah and I are very, very close to. And we've maintained this relationship over great distance. And there are people that I can absolutely share the most broken places of my life with. But I also do that with people close to me at home. The one thing about community is the pretence ends. You don't have to be a good Christian. You get to be in this journey where you are with your doubts, with your fears, with your frustrations. And people are going to love you through that, not advice you up with obligations and New Testament principles. Okay, anybody else? Wayne, I'm Cheryl. I'm Cheryl. I have a couple of things I'd love to have you clarify. One is I only wrote part of your statement, and that is God didn't need the cross to be satisfied, but we needed the cross. I need to have you explain that a little bit. Okay. And then the second thing is the... You're assuming my ability to hold two things in my mind at the same time. Well, I'm proud of myself for remembering the second. Okay, if you want to get it out before I start that. That has to do with are these cats and dogs that are looking at the bowl of milk and kind of timid and fearful of it. Do you think God looks at them as feral animals, never having been really socialized to who he really is and warmed to the real God? Or are they damaged broken people, and maybe it's both animals, that need an exchange from what they were born with and infused with the life of Christ to live differently? I'm tainted by... I think I took the bowl of milk as the elder brother, and I was always handing it to the feral cats thinking I had the answers, but the law wasn't where it was at. I was as lost as they. So, how does God look at... And the milk isn't the law, obviously. The milk is the love of the Father, obviously. That's what we're offering people. I think both of your analogies work in different ways, and both would break down in different ways. The feral cat always lost in the darkness, needs an invitation to the light. Yeah, that works for me. How does God see them? I'm just going to use Jesus' words when he talks about them being... He looks at the multitudes as people who are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. So, it's not... You are perpetrators of sin that need to be punished. So, you better come quickly and get hold, or I'll kill you. It's godly. I say, man, you're on your way to destruction, and I'm doing everything I can to rescue you, to invite you out of that. If it's a bowl of milk, if it's a warm house, whatever it is that will trigger you to come home. And in that construct, John 16, Jesus conveys the convincing need to the Holy Spirit. Let the Holy Spirit convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. We've taken it as our need to do that. What he asked me to do, he goes, Love others like you've been loved. I get to love people. When they're being convinced... Because I think the Holy Spirit has the amazing ability to convince without condemning that we don't have. And so, when we're trying to convince somebody, we're usually into a fight, and then our flesh riles up, and even if we... I think character is how you treat people when you know you're right. That to me is the real test of character. And if you're willing to, when I know I'm right, I'm willing to badger you, sue you, lie about you for your good. She's not any character, none. So that's what I would say about that. That's how God looks at people, if that answers your question. As far as who Jesus died for, most people, I think the narrative we have of the cross actually has Jesus dying for the Father. Jesus dies to satisfy the Father's justice. That's how it's said. Scripture never says it. There's no language in Scripture that leads to that conclusion. It's just what we've concluded about this, which is this angry deity needing to be appeased. Our sacrifices aren't good enough. Our conduct isn't good enough. So Jesus would be good enough to appease. That's all a false God construct. That arose not out of God's revelation. That arose out of our own sense of shame and needing to have some fixed to our shame. What we have in the Testament is God died for me. I mean, Jesus died for me on the cross. I was the one being satisfied. The Father didn't have this horrible offense that had to be satisfied at the cross. There wasn't a debt that God owed Satan for our sin. That analogy is used. It's not in Scripture. It talks about a ransom being paid, but the ransom is for the sin that has violated our lives and being free of that into the life of Jesus. So he's satisfied, I guess, in us what sin seeks to destroy has destroyed would destroy. The condemnation, the perishing that we deserve and the cross satisfied in Christ because he became the federal man. He stood in our place like Adam was in our place in the garden in the fall, and we were all in Adam. Now Christ takes our place to be the one in which redemption is satisfied. Now my sin and shame has been dealt with. I haven't changed one bit. I've still tempted by it. I've got this old nature. I've still got the same stuff going on in my life. I am loved that I now get to be with God at my most broken. Why? So God and I can talk about the brokenness in my life. This idea of we're safe with God now because Jesus is like a little password slide thing where it hides the reality. So God doesn't see our sin when we're with Him. Well, what good is that? I owe God to see where it is that I'm broken. If I have no shame about that, now that becomes part of the transaction between God and I. Why am I broken here? Why don't I trust you here? Why am I envious here? Why am I angry here? And that becomes part of my conversation with God as God untwists that flesh. So that's why Jesus died for us. We have Jesus jumping in front of the bus to save us from being crushed by the bus, but his dad's driving the bus. So we still come out of the cross with, oh man, I love Jesus. I love what he did for me. But his father's a bit of a creep. And as we said the first night, we set up the Stockholm Syndrome. God's this horrible, abusive personality that somehow Jesus made him safe. And now by sucking up to him, we can have a better life. It's created the wrong dynamics for real discipleship. You are loved. You are loved in your brokenness. And the more you'll come live in that love, the more of your brokenness gets reversed and untwisted. And the freer you get to live in the righteousness, which you will covet. You're not saying they're going, well, I wish I could sin like everybody else sins. I don't want that stuff in my life. That stuff is Paul said in Galatians 614, forbid that I should boast in anything except the cross of Christ through whom I die to the world and the world died to me. That's great language. That's not Paul saying as a Pharisee he had lots to boast about. As a believer he had nothing. I didn't do this. I just started loving him. Things began to change in me. And he's nuts about over. If you end up with something to boast about, it's religion. It's not relationship. Make sense? Yes. OK. You've been, right? Yes. I've been. One proof test of people, or proof test, we use a lot as far as Jesus being wrathful like God is Jesus in the temple. What do you think about that? What was that situation? Cleansing the temple moment? Yes. I don't think we really picture that well because we think of an angry God. We think, you know, we already put that on Jesus. One of the things that I think is Matthew that tells us in his parable that Jesus goes in the temple and he takes a whip in hand and knocks over some tables and he has his declaration. I don't think it was as rage as we think because here's the clue in that little story. When he's done, all the kids come over to hang out with Jesus. Now, if he'd been in an enraged lunatic, I don't think the kids are scattering. If he did that in a way that just, what are you doing? This is my father's house and he's twirling the whip, but he's not beating people with it. We're not told he's beating. He has a skirt. We don't know he's hitting people. He's just saying this, you're ruining my father's house and it was the zeal for his house that consumed him. That's part of that language. What I think is he did that in a way that we can't even fathom. Not like our movies have depicted it. He did it in a way where the kids could come over and say, man, that was really cool. So, however that was, that's different, I think, but I don't know that we imagined that well. That's what I would say enough.