One of the troubles with trouble is that it can encourage us toward selfishness. When things are going well for us, it is rather easy to feel magnanimous. When challenges come our way, however, suddenly we feel entitled to be focused on ourselves.
Not so with Jesus. It is more than shocking that the Lord of glory would, as He did in John 13, take on the form of the lowliest servant and wash the feet of His disciples. What makes it all the more potent is that He did this on the night in which He was betrayed. Jesus was within a day of facing not just Roman crucifixion, the most gruesome death one could imagine, but facing the full wrath and fury of His Father poured out on Him. Yet His immediate concern was not this grave challenge before Him but that He might teach one more lesson to His disciples. A few chapters later, His prayers were focused on two things — that God would be glorified in what was about to take place and that God would bless these same disciples. Jesus was thinking of others. In the face of His passion, His passion was those whom He loved.
Compassion, rightly understood, means entering into the passion, or suffering, of others. It means setting aside our own concerns, our own fears, our own needs, and not just supplying but feeling the needs of those around us. This, ironically, happens not when we have all that we need. It happens instead when we come to understand that we have nothing and that we need nothing. Compassion flows not out of the well satisfied but from those who have not. There is, in turn, only one way to do this — to die to self. When my aspirations, my hopes and dreams, my wants are crucified, I enter into liberty. I am free to take up the concerns of others. A dead man has no need to protect his comfort. He has no need to protect his wealth. He has no need at all to protect his reputation. Perhaps Janis Joplin had it right: freedom may just be another word for “nothing left to lose.”
The Serpent is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. His passion is to build up in us misguided passions. Jesus hungered and thirsted after the will of the Father, yet the will of the Devil is that we would hunger and thirst. He delights to fill us with needs, whereas our Father delights to fill our needs. Jesus spoke to this in the Sermon on the Mount. He encourages us: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matt. 6:25–26).
We can die to ourselves not because we are so worthless, but because He has ascribed worth to us. The One who gave us our value, who values us, is the same One who meets all of our needs. We who were dead, He has made alive — and He keeps us alive. He meets our needs daily, such that the last thing we need to worry about is our needs. Now we are free to show forth His compassion because we are indeed filled. We lose our cares when we remember we are dead. We care for others out of our fullness because He has made us alive.
Our passion, then, ought to be that we would identify with our Lord. We enter into His passion as we put to death all our selfish concerns and fears. When we take on the form of servants and wash the feet of our brothers, we become one with Him in dying to self. But we likewise are called to enter into His resurrection — even His ascension. He has, in Him, made us alive. When He walked out into the garden from His tomb, the Firstborn of the new creation, He blazed the trail where we now walk. When He ascended to the right hand of the Father, He took us with Him. He has, in Him, made us kings and queens, seated in thrones of glory in the heavenly places. He has made us joint heirs with Him, such that we inherit the whole of the world. We have nothing, and so have nothing to lose. We have everything, and so have everything to give.
When we live with Him, when we seek to live like Him, then we are seeking first the kingdom of God. When we put our desires to death, we are seeking first His righteousness. And when we feast before Him, we feast because all these things have been added to us.
He has given us one holy passion. He has given us His own passion. He has called us to identify with Him, and, in so doing, we identify with His body, the church. Love your brother. Walk with him. Mourn with him when he mourns. Rejoice with him when he rejoices. And in both instances, know that your Father in heaven mourns and rejoices with you.
How about a phone call… I have solved the gap problem, and done what your ol’ man said that Aquinas, Agistine, Luther, Calvin, and Edwards, could not… a scripturally backed ‘Theodicy’, and it is VERY good that God created ‘evil’.
I was sad to know that he had passed – but knew he was gone as soon as he said he would never know in this life time ‘why’ God created evil. God would rather bring someone like him ‘home’ vs. have him tell a single lie.
I had no idea you existed… until he mentioned you in a sermon, and why I reach out. I would like to give you what has been revealed to me.
716.229.1343
Shalom.
PS – I do not do email due to ‘code exposure’… I work IT technology, of many technical positions. Use the number… I don’t ‘bite’. 🙂
Brother,
While I am intrigued by your claims I’ll pass on the call. While you may know why God created evil, you don’t know why He called my father home. If you’d like to mail me something I’d give it a read.
I absolutely know why your father and our brother was called home… the number of his days were completed and it was his time to join the rest of God’s people.
I am at a loss, but not surprised that this place is in the mess that it is… Jesus told us to love one another, and I don’t feel that around here. He told us that whatever we did to each other we have done to Him. We accuse, and mistrust ‘strangers’ – not knowing who they might be, and hide from each other, even because we are wise in our own eyes.
I am weary of all these text messages and words, you cannot have a conversation that way, it is why the Word of God has failed us, and why He sent His Son in person to do what ‘paper’ cannot. Paper and words have no spirit or voice. You can read them, but the context is open to interpretation, especially with regards to scripture, as is hidden in them very deep meanings and stumbling blocks, that is, until you can understand that God created evil (Job 2:10, Isaiah 45:7, Psalm 139:12) and does not ‘see’ it as we do. You CANNOT destroy evil, be cause it is not a ‘thing’ as your father said, and sorry to offend you with my ‘ol man comment, all of God’s people are friends to me, the Apostle Paul? “Paulie’ – I mean no disrespect.
God is ‘spirit’ and exists at 2 extremes – good and evil. At one end, Holy, and in some translations and with purpose Wholly, combined forces, the ALL, the One, the Almighty, and at the other, chaos and destruction, the ‘destroyer’. You could think of Him in a ‘Lord of the Rings’ schema, the Holy spirit representing the ‘unbreakable’ LAW OF GOD. God’s law CANNOT be ‘broken’, as it is given as a BLESSING and a CURSE, and judging is in ‘real time’, and the Great Judgement being (on one side) the final destruction – the Lord’s Day as in Amos 5:18-22. Or, a peaceful ending where the ‘elements’ melting with fervent heat, are the elements of society; the way we live and hiw it is that we love each other.
If you read Isaiah 45:7… notice what God ‘creates’ vs. ‘forms and makes’. Man in God’s image and having ALL of the same spirits that He is of, possesses abilities to ‘fruit’ both ‘good’ and ‘evil’… and thus, knowing both, has a ‘moral compass’, and ability to separate light from darkness, man’s error is thinking that he can destroy his enemy (evil) or even control it. The ONLY control that we have as men is to make and form that ‘darkness’ into light, and that sir can only be done with love.
I have a but few things to show you, in conversation and you can build upon that… just be prepared to be very heart broken when you see how it is that we have been found to arrive at these times. I promise that you cannot ‘unsee’ it and will ulimately set in you an appreciation for our God, that you thought only could be felt – not known – and only by those who have gone before us and are called home.
Shalom.
Brother- God is not evil. Sovereign over evil. Ordained evil. Brought evil to pass. Changed the inclination of His creatures, yes. But He is not evil. If God is or has evil in Him is your perspective, and I grant I could be misunderstanding what you are saying, then the conversation stops here.
You misunderstand. And again why I request a phone call… did He not send and evil spirit – lying tongues to Ahab’s prophets, an evil spirit to Saul, etc.
Didn’t Jesus cast out demons?
The ‘word’ sir… God’s law like a command set from… well, God. Wrestle with the scruptures I me mentioned and accept that the scriptures are NOT in error. They say what they say, BLESSINGS and CURSES… as was Jesus, as being the ‘Word’. Paul said He was a stumbling block to the Jews and that we should NOT have murdered Him.
You have my number and God has them all.
If your Father was still aroind he would probably understand as per his sermons.
Shalom.