When to Break the Rules

The scriptures referred to are Acts 8:26-40.

I was on a website that listed all of these bizarre but supposedly true laws. According to it, in Georgia no one may carry an ice cream cone in his back pocket on Sunday. That might save you some laundry problems but why just on Sunday? In Arizona, donkeys are not allowed to sleep in bathtubs. What happened to give rise to this law? In Idaho, it is illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than 50 pounds! You would think that would be the law in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And here in Florida, it is illegal to sing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit. There go my plans to stage a production of my new play, Jaws: The Musical!

Some laws are not just silly but dumb. In New York, the penalty for jumping off a building is death. So if you survive they execute you? And in Wisconsin, when two trains meet at an intersection of track, neither one shall proceed until the other has. So your wait for the next train may literally take forever.

Still other laws are merely antiquated. The Encyclopedia Britannica is banned in Texas for containing a formula for making beer at home. That must date from Prohibition. More chilling is the law in Maine that requires that people bring shotguns to church...in case of Indian attack.

Laws are meant to be concrete expressions of justice. Some laws become outdated. Some laws remain valid. Some human laws are bad from the start.

The Old Testament or Hebrew Bible contains 613 laws: some moral, some ceremonial, some civil. Some of its civil laws have influenced our own. But some are outdated, either because the institutions they cover, like slavery, have been outlawed in our society or because they are now considered cruel, like the rough justice of taking an eye for an eye. Orthodox Jews still observe some of the ceremonial laws, such as those concerning Kosher foods and the wearing of blue tassels on their prayer shawls. Those dealing with sacrifices and the priesthood ceased with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The Ten Commandments are moral laws. As Christians, those are the kind with which we are primarily concerned. Moral laws don't become outdated.

Today we look at the major breaking of the Mosaic laws in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Someone said the book should be called “Some Acts of Some Apostles.” Its main focus is on Peter and later Paul. But Philip gets the spotlight here. In John's gospel, Philip, with his Greek name, was the one to whom Greeks came when they wanted an introduction to Jesus. Now he, not Paul, will be the first to take the good news of Jesus to the Gentiles.

The Holy Spirit tells Philip to go to the highway that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza and eventually to Egypt. It is a busy road. Philip sees an Ethiopian leaving Jerusalem. The man is a court official of the Candance, which is not a name but the title of the Queen of the African Empire of Meroe. (The Greeks called all of Africa south of the Nile Ethiopia.) Philip couldn't have known it at the time but the official was a God-fearer. That's what they called Gentiles who worshipped the Lord but didn't actually convert to Judaism. In the case of the official, he couldn't become a Jew. He was a eunuch and according to the law of Moses, he was excluded from the congregation of Israel. (Deuteronomy 23:1)

Prompted by the Spirit of God, Philip runs up to the chariot and overhears the man reading aloud from the book of Isaiah. He asks the official if he understands what he is reading and is invited to guide the official through what is a difficult passage. The man is reading from the 53^rd chapter of Isaiah. It is one of the four “servant songs” that describe God's suffering servant. In some passages it appears that Israel is the servant but in others it seems to be an individual who comes out of Israel.

The song the court official is studying is the one that we read during Holy Week: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. Yet he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:4-6) The official had just read this before Philip arrived.

Of course, the man doesn't understand who Isaiah is talking about. Neither did Philip or any of the apostles before the risen Christ explained it to them. This passage describes a different way to think of the Messiah and his mission. So Philip was primed to speak on this very passage by the Holy Spirit.

A word here about the Spirit. In John's gospel, Jesus calls the Spirit a parakletos. (John 14:16) This Greek word has been translated as Advocate or Comforter. The truth is there is no adequate word in English that can capture every meaning of the Greek word. It basically means someone who is called in. It could be a character witness called in to testify for you at a trial. But it could also mean someone who is called in to boost the morale of dispirited soldiers or a team of athletes. The primary meaning then is someone called in to support you in times of trouble. The Spirit is our Helper, our Supporter, our Encourager, and our Defender.

Now the Spirit has led Philip to this man at a key moment. He enables the apostle to open the scriptures to the official and tell him the good news of God's love and forgiveness through Jesus. But did Philip anticipate where this was going? For they come to a body of water and the man says, “Look! Here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

Homiletics professor Fred Craddock says Philip could have responded, “Actually, I can think of a million reasons why not.” This man was not a Jew. At this point, only Jews have become followers of Jesus. Jesus was the Messiah sent to the Jews. Could a Gentile, a non-Jew, be saved?

And on top of that, the man is a eunuch. He is not considered a whole man by the Torah and is therefore outside God's covenant. Could he become a member of the body of Christ?

Philip can't consult Peter, James and the others on this, an unprecedented and important decision for the Jesus movement. On the one hand, he is being asked to include into God's people a man explicitly excluded by the law of Moses. On the other hand, the Spirit led him to this man at this time. Why would the Spirit of God bring all of these circumstances together if he didn't expect Philip to convert and baptize the man?

How long did Philip agonize over this? We don't know. But we know that he stepped down into the water with the eunuch and set a precedent. He broke a bunch of laws but what he did was just. He overlooked the external circumstances and saw that here was a man ready to accept the love of God and love him back. How could he say “No?”

Philip had a crisis of conscience. He was faced with either going against the law as it was taught him or going against the Spirit of God. He chose the Spirit. The law in this case no longer embodied justice.

The dramatic climax of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn comes when Huck wrestles with his conscience over his friend Jim, a runaway slave. Jim has told Huck that, if necessary, he will steal his wife and kids from their owner. Huck has been taught from birth that slaves are property and to steal a man's property is a sin. Huck should turn Jim in. If he doesn't, Huck believes that he will go to hell. But their time together on the raft has allowed Huck to get to know Jim in a way that white people seldom did in those days. He cannot think of Jim as property or an animal or anything other than a man and a friend. And though everything he has been taught tells him that he is wrong to do it, Huck decides to help his friend, even if it means going to hell.

Huck and Philip would have understood what we read in John's first letter last week: “By this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” (1 John 3:19-20) Sometimes we condemn ourselves needlessly but God knows better.

1 John continues: “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us.” (1 John 3:23) God's commandments surpass human laws when they are in conflict. As Peter and the apostles said to the Sanhedrin, “We must obey God rather than people.” (Acts 5:29) Even laws intended to honor God may be broken if to obey them is to do something against our faith or to do something unloving. Jesus healed people on the Sabbath. He taught women. He ate with sinners. The experts in the Law said he was breaking the Law and in league with the devil. But Jesus did these things in obedience to a higher law. The law of loving God and loving others superseded the ones that denied and divided people. Laws may embody justice but administered without the Spirit of God they lack his mercy and his grace. Without his mercy and his grace we do not see a true picture of God. As it says in the very first chapter of John's gospel, “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17)

I wonder what the newly baptized Gentile eunuch thought when he picked up his scroll again and read on. Because just a few chapters later in Isaiah, it reads: “No foreigner who becomes a follower of the Lord should say, 'The Lord will certainly exclude me from his people.' The eunuch should not say, 'I am like a dried up tree.' For thus says the Lord: For the eunuchs who observe my Sabbaths and choose what pleases me and are faithful to my covenant, I will set up within my temple and my walls a monument that will be better than sons and daughters. I will set up a permanent monument for them that remain.

“As for the foreigners who become followers of the Lord and serve him, who love the name of the Lord, and want to be his servants—all who keep the Sabbath and do not defile it, and who are faithful to my covenant—I will bring them to my holy mountain; I will make them happy in the temple where people pray to me. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my temple will be known as a temple where all nations may pray.” (Isaiah 56:3-7)

Did Philip remember that part? Or did he just listen to the Spirit? Either way, he obeyed the will of God and the church grew in an unexpected direction. The African empire of Meroe is better known to us as the Nubian kingdom of Kush. It was so powerful that the Romans, unable to conquer it, made a treaty with it. Eventually Nubia became a Christian nation and resisted Islam until the beginning of the 16^th century. It was located where Sudan is today. (And as a side note, the Ethiopian church, located in a nation to the south of Nubia, is one of the oldest in Christendom.)

Following Jesus is trickier than just following rules. Because, as C.S. Lewis says, the Christian life is not so much like following engineering plans as it is like painting a portrait. Each of us is in the process of becoming a portrait in miniature of Christ. We are not identical like photos but each one of us is like an individual artist's impression, as different and yet as similar as El Greco's Christ and Rembrant's and Giotto's and Da Vinci's and Dali's. As any artist knows, sometimes you have to break the rules to capture the truth of your subject.

Sometimes to save a person, to turn a life around, to find a lost sheep, you have to break some rules. After all, God broke a number of the laws of nature to redeem us. But we must never break the rules for frivolous or personal reasons. The way to know when to do it is to listen to the Spirit. And to make sure you hear him and hear him correctly, you must stay close to him, so close that he is in you and you are in him, and every incandescent thought is enkindled by his divine spark, every word is an echo of his concerns, and every action an expression of his love.

This was first preached on April 18, 2003. There has been some updating.

Belief Becomes Behavior

The scriptures referred to are 1 John 3:16-24, Acts 4:5-12 and John 10:11-18.

Sociologists point out that religions have 3 main components: beliefs, behaviors and belonging. If you were living in almost any ancient culture, regardless of your beliefs, your religious behaviors would consist mostly of making sacrifices to the gods. This was not because you believed the gods cared about you. You were feeding or appeasing them or trying to win their favor. Basically your local gods were like Mafia dons. They were powerful and you wanted to keep them on your side. They were, however, not particularly moral beings. Most of Greek mythology would disappear if Zeus could keep it in his pants. Human wars were just the earthly manifestation of wars between the gods. You did not look to the gods for moral examples or direction, only protection.

Ethical monotheism, the idea that there is only one God and that God is the source of moral standards and principles, originated with Judaism. For instance, practically every culture has a story of a great flood that almost wiped out humanity, but the reasons the gods do it usually have nothing to do with morality. In the epic of Gilgamesh, the gods are hungover from drinking too much and find the humans to be too noisy! That's the reason they try to drown them. Whereas in the Torah, the reason is “The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was full of violence.” (Genesis 6:11) This was morally wrong because humans are made in the image of God. And afterwards God makes a covenant with Noah and his descendants that he will not flood the earth again and they will not kill one another. Instead they are to fill the rebooted earth with life. (Genesis 9:6-7)

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the emphasis is on how God wants us to treat one another with love. (Leviticus 19:18, 34) His people are to take care of the poor, the widow, orphan, the resident alien, and the disabled (Exodus 22:21-23; 23:6; Leviticus 19:14). We are to be honest in our dealings with one another. (Leviticus 19:11-13) God's main ethical principles are put forth in the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 20:1-17) Jesus summarized these in the 2 greatest commandments: to love God with all one is and has and to love our neighbors as ourselves. (Mark 12:29-31) When his people violate these commandments, God turns his face from them and lets them suffer the consequences of their sins. (Deuteronomy 31:17) This causes God's people to turn back to him (the basic meaning of the Hebrew word for “repent” is “turn back”) and so he turns back to them and rescues them. This happens repeatedly. It's the basic narrative of the Old Testament. (Psalm 106:43-45)

But God always warns his people first that they have done what is wrong. And it is always about those two greatest commandments. The people are either worshipping things other than God or just going through the motions when worshipping God, and they are also mistreating the disadvantaged. In Isaiah God says, “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I look the other way; when you offer your many prayers, I do not listen, because your hands are covered in blood. Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from my sight! Stop sinning! Learn to do what is right! Promote justice! Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! Take up the cause of the orphan! Defend the rights of the widow!” (Isaiah 1:15-17) The consequences for not loving God and our fellow human beings never come as a surprise. God always warns people to change their ways. God tells Jeremiah, “There are times when I threaten to uproot, tear down, and destroy a nation or kingdom. But if that nation I threatened stops doing wrong, I will cancel the destruction I intended to do to it.” (Jeremiah 18:7-8)

Still, people often think of God as unreasonable. Yet just after those verses in Isaiah he says, “Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins have stained you like the color red, you can become white like snow; though they are as easy to see as the color scarlet, you can become white like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18) In Joel it says, “Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and boundless in loyal love—often relenting from calamitous punishment. Who knows? Perhaps he will be compassionate and grant a reprieve, and leave a blessing in his wake—a meal offering and a drink offering for you to offer to the Lord your God.” (Joel 2:13-14) God is always ready to forgive because God loves us.

We see God's mercy and compassion most clearly in Jesus. Paul, after talking about how extraordinary it would be for anyone to die for another person, except maybe if that person was exceptionally good, writes, “But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) In this instance God does not wait until we repent before he offers forgiveness. He acts first. He anticipates that people will, in response to his self-sacrificial action in Christ, repent and turn to him. God loves us and so we should return that love.

And in today's passage from 1 John, we read, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” And here we see clearly the principle of ethical monotheism. We do these things because this is how God acts. God loves other people as well and so we should love them too.

Mentioning that we should lay down our lives for others may make us uneasy. We know, for instance, that at the time that the Revelation to John was written, Christians were being persecuted. (Revelation 2:10, 13) In fact the book of Revelation seems to have been written to assure Christians that while persecutions will happen, God will triumph in the end and so they should persevere. (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21)

But in 1 John we see a broader meaning is given to the phrase “lay down our lives for one another.” The very next verse asks, “How does God's love reside in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” The Greek describes this literally as the person “closing off his heart from” the person in need. So laying down one's life can mean not only giving up one's life for someone but giving up some of one's possessions to help. It is being open-hearted and generous to the person who needs help. It means helping not only with our treasure but our time and our talents. And if a person doesn't do as little as that, how can they be called a Christian?

So he continues, “Little children, let us love, not in word and speech, but in truth and action.” So we know that even in the first century there were people in the church who talked the talk but didn't walk the walk. And one of the biggest problems we have today is that people have ceased to believe that Christians mean what they say when they claim to be followers of Jesus. Because they are reluctant to lay down any parts of their lives or any privileges they have for the sake of others. That means their behaviors are at odds with their beliefs. As James says, “...faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26)

Jesus said, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) He also said, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:27) And remember, our cross doesn't mean our own troubles. Jesus carried his cross not for himself but for us. Our cross is the burdens we assume for the sake of others. As Paul puts it, “Carry one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2) And what law is that? Jesus said, “My commandment is this—to love one another just as I have loved you.” (John 15:12) He said that on the night he was arrested and sent to the cross for us. As it says at the beginning of our passage in 1 John, because Jesus laid down his life for us out of love, we are to do the same for one another.

We see this in our passage from Acts. Peter and John were arrested by the Sanhedrin, the very people who had arrested Jesus and turned him over to Pilate to be crucified. These were the people from whom the disciples were hiding in the locked room on that first Easter. Yet here they are boldly telling them that they healed a man who couldn't walk in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, a man who couldn't stay dead because he was the Christ, the Messiah. Their faith wasn't a private matter of praying by themselves. Their beliefs, that Jesus was in fact “the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead,” compelled them to behave in the way they did: helping others and proclaiming this good news. (Acts 3:15) They were no longer afraid of death, nor reluctant to lay it down for others.

And in this they were behaving like Jesus, who, in today's passage from John's gospel, says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying at the time. But after his resurrection, they got what he meant. The hired hand may run from the wolf, as indeed the disciples did at Jesus' arrest. But like a good shepherd faces the wolf at the cost of his life, Jesus faced the forces of pain and death and in the end overcame them.

Had Jesus not been raised from the dead, his followers would have eventually disappeared as did those of John the Baptist. Paul encountered a dozen of John's disciples at Ephesus but there are none today. (Acts 19:1-7) It was the risen Christ who gave Peter and the rest the courage to spread the word, despite the risk of death. And if the disciples hadn't put their beliefs in the risen Jesus into action, we wouldn't be here.

Unfortunately the church in North America and Europe is shrinking. I believe that is because we have divorced our behavior from our beliefs. Studies have shown that most Christians do not live very differently from those who don't believe. And people have noticed this. We may proclaim the gospel with our lips but we do not put it into practice in our lives. And that more than anything else has turned people off to Christianity. They don't see a lot of real Christians in the world. As Carl Jung said, “You are what you do, not what you say you will do.”

G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” It's like sobriety. As they say in A.A., it works if you work it. But when we hit difficulties, we begin to doubt ourselves, lose heart and give up. What we need is a spirit of boldness.

And that is what we are given. Because of what God did for us in Jesus, we are saved from sin and death. And knowing this truth, our passage says, our hearts do not condemn us. John's letter continues, “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness from God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.” The Greek word translated “boldness” also means “confidence” and “resolve.” We can be bold because, as Paul put it, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)

Notice that we can ask anything from God because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. If a soldier is ordered to go on a mission, he will be provided with whatever he needs to fulfill that mission. He will not be provided with anything in the world he happens to desire. Just so, we can ask God for whatever we need to fulfill the mission he has given us. That does not mean he will give us winning lottery numbers or a supermodel girlfriend or movie star boyfriend. As it says in James, “You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions.” (James 4:3) But if we need it to do God's will, we can ask and we will receive it.

And what are our orders, so to speak? “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us.” Trust Jesus and love one another. But remember we must love not just with our words but with our actions, as Jesus did. He healed people; he fed people; he made a real difference in people's lives. And if in Jesus' name we make a difference in people's lives, they will be more likely to be drawn to Jesus.

Finally our passage from 1 John says, “All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them.” The word translated “abide” means to “reside” or “stay.” If we put our trust in Jesus and love one another, we reside and stay in him and he resides and stays in us.

“And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.” We tend to think of the Holy Spirit as passive but he is dynamic. After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. (Mark 1:12) After that we are told, “Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee” and began his ministry. (Luke 4:14) The Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. (Romans 8:11) Before he ascended, Jesus told his disciples, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you...” (Acts 1:8) We are not to sit on a mountain like some guru, waiting for people to come to us and receive wisdom. We are to go out, as Jesus did, in the power of the Spirit and show his love in all that we think, say and do. We can do it “...because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:5)

Huey Lewis and the News did a whole song about the power of love. They sang that the power of love could “make a bad one good, make a wrong one right...” and that while it may seem cruel sometimes “...it might just save your life.” We know that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son to save our lives, which meant he would end up dying, painfully, at the hands of those very sinners he came to save. Jesus knew his mission would become a suicide mission. But he trusted God and believed in his promise to raise him again on the third day. And so he acted on that belief. He went to the cross out of love for us. And if we really believe that Jesus laid down his life for us, then we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

Eclipsed

The scriptures referred to are 1 John 3:1-7 and Luke 24:36-48.

Last Monday there was a total eclipse of the sun. And although this happens every 1 to 3 years, some people were predicting that it was a sign that the end of the world was here, based on some questionable interpretations of the Bible and an inability to count the number of North American towns named Nineveh in the path of the eclipse. So, of course, Facebook and other social media were full of jokes about it. And, once again, for the undiscerning, it looked like all Christians believed this and thus were fools. But not all Christians believed this, just as not all Christians believe in the pretribulation rapture, an idea not held by the early church but which has only become popular in the last 200 years, thanks to John Nelson Darby, the notes in the Scofield Bible, the book The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series of novels and movies. But in all of this hoopla, people missed the fact that something other than our star, the sun, was also eclipsed by something much smaller than itself: Jesus, God's Son, got obscured by a mountain of silliness and trivial concerns generated largely by a small group of people who claim to be his followers.

That Jesus will return is found in the Bible. Yet it is interesting that 3 of the gospels only devote a chapter each to Jesus' most detailed discussion of the matter (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21:5-36) and John has only a couple of verses (John 14:2-3). Jesus' teaching about his return in the first 3 gospels can be summarized thus: (1) Watch out that no one deceives you, especially false Christs or Anointed Ones (which is what Christ means.) (2) Don't be alarmed by wars, revolutions, earthquakes, famines and plagues. These things are like the beginning of birth pains. The end will not come immediately. (3) Christians will be persecuted. Jesus says nothing about a 2-stage return to rescue Christians from this. “And if those days had not been cut short, no one would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” (Matthew 24:22, emphasis mine) (4) Jesus' return will be obvious to all nations. (5) “But as for that day or hour no one knows it—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son—except the Father.” (Mark 13:32; cf Acts 1:7) While he was on earth, not even Jesus knew when the end would take place. Therefore we are not to try to figure it out. We are not smarter than Jesus. (6) In the meantime, other than being alert, we are to be busy doing the work Jesus gave us to do. (Matthew 24:45-47; Luke 12:42-44)

And what is that work? Jesus said we are to love God, love others, including our enemies, and spread the good news about him. (Mark 12:29-31; John 13:34-35; Luke 6:27; Matthew 28:19-20) Which is exactly what the world needs when things are getting bad. It doesn't need false hope in the form of a secret second return of Jesus to pull Christians out of the trials and tribulations the world is going through. It needs the body of Christ, which is what we as his followers are a part of. (1 Corinthians 12:27) It needs the embodiment of his Holy Spirit, doing what Jesus did. (1 Corinthians 3:16; 12:4-11)

Unfortunately, excessive attention to the details of Jesus' return has eclipsed what we are supposed to be doing now. It has eclipsed all other aspects of Christianity. Christianity is about becoming like Jesus. To do that we must focus on Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and is doing in us and what our response should be. By focusing on the date of Jesus' return, which he told us we shouldn't do, we are ignoring the true end of the story of God and humanity.

Our passage from the first letter of John puts it like this: “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” The true end or goal of the story is that we will in fact be like Jesus. We were created in the image of God. (Genesis 1:27) That image has been marred and obscured by our sins, our destructive and self-destructive thoughts, words and actions that have damaged us and those around us. But as the letter to the Colossians says of Jesus Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15) So if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. And because through him the image of God in us is being restored, if you want to know what we can be like, look at Jesus.

Now that doesn't mean we will be transformed into first century Jewish men. Just as the image of God in us is not physical but spiritual, so it will be when we are completely like Jesus. And while, as 1 John says, we don't know exactly what we will be, we do know we will be like Jesus. So what do we know about what Jesus is like spiritually?

We know that Jesus felt compassion for people who were in need. (Matthew 14:14) He healed a leper out of compassion. (Mark 1:40-42) He healed two blind men out of compassion. (Matthew 20:30-34) He fed the 4000 because he had compassion for the hungry. (Matthew 15:32) He had compassion for the widow at Nain and raised her son from the dead. (Luke 7:12-15) He even taught people out of compassion. (Mark 6:34) So to be like Jesus is to show compassion for others.

We know Jesus did not let the traditional interpretations of God's law get in the way of helping others. He healed people on the Sabbath, which the scholars of his time interpreted as work and therefore forbidden. Jesus pointed out that (1) God works on the Sabbath, keeping creation going. (John 5:16-17) (2) Despite all their prohibitions of work, his critics would help an animal or a person who fell into a pit on the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:11; Luke 14:5) (3) He said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” His critics forgot that the Sabbath was about God making us rest regularly. It wasn't supposed to be a straightjacket, keeping us from doing what's good. (Matthew 12:12) So to be like Jesus is to not let a technicality stop us from helping a person in trouble or distress.

We know that Jesus forgave people. He forgave people who thought their illness was the result of sin. (Matthew 9:2) He forgave a woman who had a bad reputation in her town. (Luke 7:36-50) He refused to condemn a woman caught in the act of adultery, though we know he felt strongly about adultery. (John 8:3-11) Spectacularly, he asked God to forgive the men who were in the process of crucifying him. (Luke 23:34) So to be like Jesus is to forgive others and not condemn them.

We know that Jesus knew the scriptures well. He used them to counter temptations. (Matthew 4:1-11) He used them to correct misunderstandings. (Matthew 15:3-6) He used them to show which commandments were the most important. (Mark 12;28-31) He used them to get people to think about who he was. (Matthew 22:41-45) He used them to frame what was happening to him during his suffering. (Mark 15:34) And as we see in our passage from Luke today, he used them to instruct his disciples on what they must teach about him when they preach the good news. So to be like Jesus is to be well acquainted with the scriptures and able to use them appropriately.

We know that Jesus did what he did out of love for us. John tells us that on the night Jesus was betrayed, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now loved them to the very end.” (John 13:1) And it wasn't a selfish love. He didn't love them for what they could do for him. He said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) He even washed his disciples' feet, the job of the lowest of slaves. He said, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too should wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example—you should do just as I have done for you.” (John 13:14-15) Later that evening he says, “My commandment is this—to love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12-13) So to be like Jesus is to serve others and to love them in a self-sacrificial way.

All of this comes from who Jesus is: God's Son, the true image of God. When in Genesis we are told that God created human beings in his image, we are not told just exactly what that means. But in Jesus we see that image in action. And a little later in 1 John, we are told the nature of the God in whose image we are made. “The person who does not love does not know God for God is love.” (1 John 4:8) John is not just being poetic here, meaning simply that God is loving, though that is also true. He says God is love. God is literally a love relationship. God is the Father loving the Son who loves the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. That divine, eternal love is the image in which we are made.

A few verses later, this is confirmed. “Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:11-12, emphasis mine) So no one has ever seen God but if we love one another, God lives in us, and so we can see God in the love we have for one another. Jesus said, “Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) They will know it because they will see God in and through us as we love one another.

Notice that Jesus did not say that people will know we are his disciples because we agree on every little thing. One of the most loving couples I ever knew had very different political views. But they didn't let the fact that he was a staunch Republican and she was a strong Democrat diminish their love for one another. They loved one another to the day she died. And he never remarried.

Jesus is the God who is Love Incarnate. And that's what gets obscured by people who obsess over every detail of the end times and who seem to want God to end this world and judge everyone strictly on every point of doctrine that they believe. Though the one who will judge us is Jesus, who lived and died as one of us and who knows our every weakness. (John 5:22; Hebrews 4:15) We are told not to judge others. (Matthew 7:1) That's Jesus' job and he knows things about those he will judge that we don't. And he is both just and merciful. (John 5:30; Luke 6:36)

That Jesus will return is one of the basic beliefs of the faith. But as we've seen, we can't predict when he will return and while we are to stay alert, what we are to do in the meantime is to do the work he has given us to do. And that's to love everyone, not just with our lips but with our lives, and tell everyone the good news about Jesus. And while the sun at the center of this solar system will get eclipsed again and again, we must not let anything eclipse God's Son, Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us and wants us to do the same.

The Heart of the Problem

The scriptures referred to are Acts 4:32-35and 1 John 1:1-2:2.

A professor of mine once called Marxism a Christian heresy. That is, Karl Marx, who was raised as a Lutheran, proposed an economic system that highly resembles what we read in today's passage from Acts. “The group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one said that any of his possessions was his own, but everything was held in common. With great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. For there was no one needy among them, because those who were owners of land or houses were selling them and bringing the proceeds from the sales and placing them at the apostles' feet. The proceeds were distributed to each, as anyone had need.” And this is mirrored in a principle of Marxism that the production and distribution of goods and services should come “from each according to his ability” and should go “to each according to his needs.” It sounds great! And it seems to be in accord with scripture.

The problem is that Marx thought religion got in the way of his economic system, eventually called Communism. He wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In other words, religion numbs people to their suffering and pain in a world where the rich and powerful oppress the poor and prevents them from doing anything about injustice. Marx goes one to say, “The abolition of religion as the illusionary happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.” That is, religion is essentially about nice dreams. People need to wake up from those dreams, face reality and make their own happiness.

But did you see the contradiction in Marx's thought? He said just a few sentences before that religion is “the heart of a heartless world.” He wants people to give up the heart and soul and yet somehow make the resulting heartless and soulless world into a “workers' paradise.” But how did the early church accomplish what Marx was aiming for? Through their faith in Jesus Christ, the embodiment of the God who is love. Without that faith and love how were people to come up with the paradise Marx wanted? He desired the results of faith and love without the object of that faith and the source of that love. That's like trying to get all the benefits of our sun—light and warmth and energy—but without the sun itself. Marx wanted the Christian ideal of a generous and selfless society without Christ being involved. That's the heresy.

And how did these Communist and officially atheist nations do? Matthew White in his book Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History, found that in 1 century of existence Communism killed 20 million more people than all the religious conflicts in 25 centuries of history. He writes, “A friend once wondered aloud how much suffering in history has been caused by religious fanaticism, and I was able to confidently tell her 10 percent...” So if anything, it looks like religion is more often a restraint on most human suffering than its cause. And it means the other 90% of human suffering was caused by things other than religion. Things like human nature. Under Marx's system, put into practice in places like Russia, China, Cambodia, and North Korea, more people suffered, through political persecution, through starvation and through giving people, like Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung and his successors, power unchecked by the consideration that there is a God whom they ought to emulate and to whom they must one day answer. The reality is not simply that religion makes people tolerate injustice and oppression and so they must reject it. The reality is that when you give humans god-like authority, they will abuse it, whether they do so in the name of religion or of secular ideologies or for their own glory and benefit.

Communism and other utopian systems may look good on paper but as we see daily in the news, human nature can make even a good system function badly. People can exploit any economic or governmental or organizational system. We put too much faith in systems and ignore the human factor. Or as scripture calls it, sin.

Why didn't the communal sharing of goods and property that we see in our passage from Acts continue? Because of sin. In the very next chapter of Acts we see a husband and wife pretend to do what others have done. Ananias and Sapphira sell a piece of property and hold back some of the proceeds before giving the rest to the apostles to distribute. It wasn't the holding back that was the problem. As Peter says, “Before it was sold, did it not belong to you? And when it was sold, was the money not at your disposal? How have you thought up this deed in your heart? You have not lied to people but to God.” (Acts 5:4) In other words, Ananias was free to do what he liked with the proceeds. His sin was in lying about how much he had given to God. He wanted to keep some of his money for himself but he wanted to look like he was giving it all away to the people who needed it.

That's probably why this remarkable type of sharing among the first Christians came to an end. Selfish and self-serving motivations meant that the way Christian generosity was expressed had to be changed. When Paul urged the Gentile churches to help the poor Christians in Jerusalem, he said that this shouldn't be “something you feel forced to do.” (2 Corinthians 9:5) Instead he says, “Each one of you should give just as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corithinans 9:7) It had to be voluntary. Those who had more should, of course, give more than those who are poor. But even today, we see that poor churches tend to be more generous than rich churches. Probably because poor churches feel the needs of the poor more strongly.

People who come up with utopian ideas often forget about human sin. For instance, after the first World War, Germany became a democracy. Hitler was mocked as a buffoon but the right wing thought they could control him. Despite not getting the majority of votes, he put together a coalition of smaller parties that got him just enough support to be named Chancellor. After he got power legitimately he used martial law to abolish democracy. The people who set up Germany's democracy did not foresee how a really unscrupulous elected official could exploit the loopholes in their system because they did not allow for human sin.

The Boy Scouts of America has been a highly respected organization for most of its 114 years. Its mission is to “prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.” But as we've seen, men who were more interested in satisfying their own desires than in helping boys become better citizens joined it and damaged both the lives of children and also the organization so badly that it had to go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy because of the sexual abuse lawsuits.

And of course the church has similarly been infiltrated by people who are more interested in benefiting themselves than in denying themselves, taking up their crosses and following Jesus. Christ foresaw this. He said, “Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are voracious wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)

We are all sinners, including the guy in the funny collar saying this. We need to recognize this or we will keep falling short of what God wants us to become. That's why our passage from 1 John warns us that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” When we put our trust in Jesus we have been saved from the penalty of sin. But the power of sin can still bedevil us if we do not continue to trust him and take up our cross daily and follow him. When the doctors finished the 6 surgeries on me after my car accident, I was saved from dying. But in order to take advantage of the life I now had after all they had done in putting me back together, I had to go through the process of following their orders and doing physical therapy, however painful. Our life as Christians is like that. On the cross Jesus made eternal life possible. But if we want to get the benefits of what he did, if we want to walk with Jesus, we have to follow the Great Physician's orders. Only when Jesus returns, will we be saved from the very presence of sin.

1 John says, “But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness.” A real Christian will, from time to time, do a spiritual self-examination and see how they are doing in following Jesus. When they see that they are not behaving like Jesus—being unforgiving, unkind, envious, unfaithful, unloving, easily angered, etc—they will stop and ask God for forgiveness. One sign that someone who claims to be a Christian really isn't is if they never admit that they are wrong or have sinned or that they need to ask forgiveness. That's a sign of arrogance, of feeling you can do it all without any help, including God's. The humble person knows he can be and at times is wrong and that he needs God's grace to be a follower of Jesus.

So real Christians course-correct their walk with Jesus. But what do we do about those wolves in sheeps clothing? Jesus said, by their fruit—by what they produce—you will know them. (Matthew 7:16) And Paul gives us a good rundown of the works that people just following their unredeemed human nature produce: “sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murders, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things.” (Galatians 5:19-21) So not only are they letting their desires and actions run riot and so mess up their personal lives, they are causing problems for others, too. And even if they seem to be doing spectacular things for Christ, remember what he said: “On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!'” (Matthew 7:22-23)

What do we do about them? Well, we don't ignore them. Jesus said, “I am sending you out like sheep surrounded by wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:6) There are people in churches that don't seem to like any decision the leadership makes and are called by my colleagues “clergy killers.” That is, they can stir up discontent and make the atmosphere in a church so toxic that eventually the clergy either quit or are dismissed. But most church people are too polite to stop these folks from causing the church to divide on issues that are not essential to the faith. I saw two women in my church get into a very nasty argument over the reimbursement of stamps! Both left the church. I was only able to get one to return.

Jesus outlines a method for dealing with people who sin. He says to start by going to the person and talking with them when the two of you are alone. If that doesn't work, bring one or two other people and try again. If that doesn't work, then, and only then, should you bring it before the church. (Matthew 18:15-17) Unfortunately most people start with the second or third step and talk about the person with others first. And please note that this is about a person sinning, not merely offending you. People ignore that part as well, instead making issues out of perceived political or theological opinions or out of someone's personality rather than about actual sins.

But if the person repents of a sin, we are to forgive them. Remember asking for forgiveness requires acknowledging the wrong you've done and humbling yourself. If a person can do that they are truly seeking to follow Jesus. And Jesus wants us to be very forgiving. (Matthew 18:21-22) If we want God to forgive us, we must forgive others from the heart. (Matthew 18:23-35)

The heart of all our problems is not that we need perfect systems or more and more laws or stricter punishments. The heart of our problems is found in our hearts. The reason why God decided to reboot humanity with Noah was that he saw that “Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil all the time.” (Genesis 6:5) Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Jesus said, “For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly.” (Mark 7:21)

Just like a person with terminal heart failure must turn to a doctor to receive a heart transplant, we must turn to God when our hearts are bad. He says in Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26) God tells Jeremiah that he will make a new covenant with his people, and the difference from the old covenant is “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

Systems and laws can always be improved but until we change our hearts they will be vulnerable to being exploited and corrupted. We must say to God as David did in his great penitential psalm, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me...Certainly you do not want a sacrifice, or else I would offer it; you do not desire a burnt sacrifice. The sacrifices God desires are a humble spirit. O God, a humble and repentant heart you will not reject.” (Psalm 51:10, 16-17) Unless we start there, we will never get to the heart of the problem.