Jesus was Not a Victim

Jesus was Not a Victim

Jesus left heaven’s glory to enter into the created world and live among those who were in rebellion against God. He was misunderstood, falsely accused, and wrongly sentenced to capital punishment on the cross. But, Jesus never played the victim.

On the other hand, Jesus made Himself to be vulnerable. Vulnerability and Victimhood are not the same thing. He made Himself vulnerable - He, the eternal Son of God - by being born in human nature to a human mother. A mere creature, Mary, changed the diapers of the Son of God! That’s vulnerability. He was surrounded by sinful siblings, yet He Himself was sinless, though most likely blamed when the younger ones cried. He was painted as having evil motives, even when the real reason He came to earth was to provide salvation for people like us who actually do have evil motives. He was “like one from whom men hide their face; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him” (Isaiah 53:3). Yes, Jesus made Himself to be vulnerable. But He never claimed victimhood.

There may be such a thing as victimhood, but the idea has become an art form these days. It is a pathway to power, as if you have a voice if you are victim over against those who are not or don’t claim it. These days, those in the throes of victimhood are skilled at making other people feel guilty for their plight. It’s not their own fault for whatever; it’s yours. If their behavior is bad today, it’s because of something that happened - that was done to them - yesterday. That is, every episode of sorrow and introspection and failure to do what needs to be done - it was set up by yesterday’s crime - a crime against - me. The focus is not on what I can do to improve my situation in the present, but rather on what happened in my past that crippled my ability to live life today.

Jesus never did this. You will not find it in the Biblical record. Yes, He made Himself vulnerable, but He did not play the victim. He didn’t blame God, or His disciples, or the religious leaders, or even the devil. There was and is sin in the world, but He didn’t whine and complain about it. He confronted it, but He treated it as a part of the present reality that needed to be dealt with, and He was prepared to deal with, as only He could. 

This can mean many things, but one of them is this: Jesus does not blame you for His death. He holds us accountable, but He does not leverage our guilt in order to make Him look or “feel” better. That is so far below Him. And, it is also far below His followers. We also are to be vulnerable, but we are not to play the victim. 

So what does it mean for the Christian to embrace his/her vulnerability? It means that we are but creatures, and the world does not revolve around us, but rather the Creator. It means that we realize our present reality, that we are sinners saved by grace living in a sinful world. If we experience disease of disability, it is part of the present reality that will be wonderfully transformed when Jesus comes again. If it is mistreatment by others, we take it as a badge of honor as those who follow Christ, who was even more mistreated that we are. To be vulnerable in this world as a Christian means that it is not all about me, but about the honor of His name. If I find myself offended because I am not properly appreciated or celebrated, then I know that the Holy Spirit will soon convict me, and I will be on my knees confessing my sin and, once again, sanctifying Christ as Lord in my heart - Christ as Lord, not me.

Let me end by looking back at Jesus once again. If anyone would be justified in being cruelly affronted, it would be Him. We may not deserve all of how we are treated, but surely we deserve some of it. We are sinners after all. But Jesus is not: never was; never will be. Always pure. Always glorious. And yet, He made Himself vulnerable so that we can live our lives today looking up, and live life forever, in perfect fellowship with Him, with all that He has created, and even with our own formerly twisted selves.

God Does Not Revert to the Mean

God Does Not Revert to the Mean

I marked Romans 3:3 as one of the critical questions of the Bible: “What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?” Let me point out a rather obvious point in this verse: there is a difference between “faithlessness” and “faithfulness.” The old hymn does not sing “Great is thy faithlessness,” but rather, “Great is Thy faithfulness.” It is a part of God’s character, to be faithful, and He never acts out of character.

Second, let me just mention the phrase the title, reversion to the mean, or, regression to the mean. I am not an expert in statistics, but I read that outliers will normally be followed by instances which are more in line with what is “normal” or “average.” Another way of stating this phrase is that there is a “reversion to mediocrity.” We can now put the title and the verse together. 

God is always faithful. There is no “mean” toward which He could revert, because perfect faithfulness and reliability is His rule. It is more than “normal.” It is an always, never-interrupted faithfulness.

So why would anyone every question God’s faithfulness? I believe it would be because we forget that God’s faithfulness is not like our faithfulness, which is often marked by faithlessness. We “revert to the mean” over and over again, against our best intentions, and we fall away from faithfulness. Further, when we find unfaithfulness in ourselves, we expect that God might respond in kind, as if God in heaven would say, “Well then, if you are going to be like that, then I just might be like that as well. What we are supposing of God is that He will respond in kind to us. Why? Because that is what we do toward others.

But God is not like us. He is not subject to this law of statistics, the reversion to the mean, because He has no mean. He simply is, and what He is is perfect, in all things, and in faithfulness.

But what about us? What does it say about us when our faithfulness looks a lot more like faithlessness? For one thing, it says that we are sinners. Even sinners saved by grace are still sinners, and when we commit a sin, our faithfulness is necessarily marred. Perhaps our standard over time becomes compromised, so that we have a few good days of faithfulness, and then many “normal” days when, well, we revert to mediocrity when it comes to faithfulness. Is this the way it should be? No.

We are saved by grace. Therefore we should be gracious. We are saved through the instrumentality of faith. Therefore we should be faithful. We serve the God of truth. Therefore we should not lie. We trust the promises of God. Therefore, we should not worry. But we do worry and we do lie and we are less than faithful and are often not very gracious. How can this be in those who are given refashioned hearts that are being crafted into conformity with the character of Christ? How can those who have been taken hold of by Christ be so unlike Him so often? There is not really a satisfactory answer. Sin in the life of a Christian is a real problem. It reveals that the child of God has trivialized the sacrifice of Christ which bought him out from under sin’s penalty and power, as though what Jesus did for us on the cross carries little weight in our behaviors and reactions.

The “excuse” that we have is that we live distant from Christ. We are not “abiding,” to use a good Bible word. We may have one “Christ” in our life, but many lords - one Lord Jesus Christ, but many others “lords” that we follow when it comes to resentment or anger or jealousy. We profess that we have “closed with Christ,” to use an old Puritan phrase, but we still seem very open to ungodly influences. We then “revert to the mean,” just like others, many of whom don’t even claim to know Christ or to have been set free by the Gospel.

Our reversion is not to be to the mean, but to Christ. As outliers in this world, we are not to become more like “normal” humanity, but rather to become more like Jesus, perfectly faithful Jesus, who will remain faithful to us even when we are not.

Crisis and Process

Crisis and Process

Different churches have different approaches to the working out of Christianity. Faith in Christ is essential for all, if indeed they are Christian at all. But some churches tend more toward “crisis.” Others tend more toward “process.” As in most cases, it is not an either/or situation. It is rather both/and. But which is more important?

You know what a crisis is. It is when the bill is due and you don’t have the money. It is when someone knocks on the door with painful information. It is a life-changing moment, and often times, it seems to be negative. But “crisis” is not always negative. It is that point of time when a decision is due. It might be the best decision that you every made in your life. Or not. But the perfect dive begins with the crisis of actually jumping from the platform. It is the “critical” inflection point. I am not sure if we can connect “crisis” and “critical” etymologically, but I’m sure we can logically. That moment when you say “I do;” when you sign your name on the document; when you accept the job offer, or say “I quit.” We may have many crisis points in life, but in between, there is a lot of process.

Process rarely gets the headlines that crisis does. When the lights go out in Georgia, or Texas, it is a crisis. But there was process, evidently faulty, that led to the crisis. That brings us to a wonderful verse in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, that city in northern Greece (or, Macedonia) that was named for Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father. Paul wrote this verse to say something about crisis (implied) and process (overt):
    •    “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6 NAS95)

When you and I begin a good work, it may well indeed be a crisis, a decisive inflection point. But God has no crises. I’m not sure He has processes either. He’s different from us. But in order to bring about that “perfection” in us, He uses processes, accommodated to our human situation. We can call it different things, like discipleship or spiritual formation. What we should understand is that a man-made discipleship program is artificial compared to the long-term practical education that God brings about in His children through blessings and trials; through rejoicing and suffering. But God uses processes. How did it begin? I’ll bet you can guess.

When you had your first birthday, there was a party of which you were mostly unaware. But there was a point to it, because your parents looked back a year before to the crisis that happened when you emerged from the womb and became a crying and often stinky person. That crisis then gradually evolved into a process. There was cooing and feeding, and there was gradual (very gradual at first) growth and development. Birth is the crisis. Growth is the process. No birth; no growth. No crisis; no process.

I believe that this illustration helps to understand something of the Christian life. It begins with being “born again,” a critical inflection point in you life where a decision is made to trust in Christ for the salvation of your soul, recognizing that nothing else or no one else can. It is a crisis, whether it be emotional or not. And then comes the process, that sudden or slow growth and development that fills the rest of our earthly life.

So it is both crisis and process. Some emphasize the crisis, without which there is no process. Some emphasize the process. But both are necessary.

And one more point: unlike physical birth followed by growth and then, if we live long enough, we experience decline and then death, life in Christ begins with the new birth, but then leads to growth, and when Jesus comes again, perfection, followed by life, and more life, called eternal life. If you are not involved in the process, then please go directly to the crisis. Go directly to the cross.

What is a “Good” Christian?

What is a “Good” Christian?

Recent news accounts quoted a person describing a particular Jewish man in less than favorable terms. It was explained, at least in part, why this person deserved this description, and I wondered how it would go if a Christian were described in the same way, a *** Christian. It would be difficult for me to write about this in particular, since it would require me to use a word that my grandkids are not allowed to say, and it seems the prohibition applies to grandpa as well.

So how do I write about this? I began thinking about what it meant to be a “good” Jew. I suppose that, since the definition of “Jew” is broad, there would be differing opinions about what “good.” But that would apply to “Christian” as well - what is a “good” Christian?” since the definition of Christian has been used by different groups with different ideas: conservative vs. liberal; Biblical vs. cultural; devout vs. casual. Is it possible that some of these people who use the word “Christian” are not “good enough” to be Christian at all?

So what is a “good” Christian? In some churches, faithful attendance would be a marker. In other churches, hefty giving counts for goodness. It can span from strong leadership to humble service. “Good” is a very flexible word. 

In all of these measures (and more), we could always be better. “Better” is a comparative form of “good,” and my good and yours could always be better. So one of our problems in defining a “good” Christian is realizing that we could always do better, which means what we are doing now is less than better, or not so good.

Let’s get to the punch line: the question, “what is a ‘good’ Christian,” is the wrong question, because the way we have framed it answers with regard to self. How can I be good? How can I be good enough? And the Gospel answer is, “You can’t.” The issue is not, “are you a good Christian,” but this: “Do you have a good Christ?” This is because our salvation is not rooted in ourselves or our best efforts, but in what Jesus did for us. Let me say it more forcefully. If one calls himself a Christian, a “good” Christian, but does not hold to a good Christ, then he defies what it means to be a
Christian.

Now, what is a “good” Christ? These terms are more easily defined. There is only one Christ, and it is the One who has been anointed and appointed by God to be the Savior of the world, Jesus. Since He is one of a kind and defines His own category, He cannot be compared, that is, He is incomparable. He is “good” in that He is perfectly holy, just like the heavenly Father. They agree completely in word and deed. There is no separation between them, and there are no failures.

Jesus is also “good” in that He qualified Himself to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins through His perfect obedience throughout His life. In spite of the fact that He grew up in a home with sinners - think of that - sinful brothers, He Himself never sinned. Further, He willingly gave Himself up to be crucified for us, that He might, though not a sinner, be put to death for our sins. As vindication of His suffering and sacrifice, He was raised from the dead, and now gives eternal life to those who believe in Him, that is, those who find Him to be supremely good. These people are called “Christians,” and they need no adjectives before their names.