Offering My Back

Lord.  Savior.  Son of God.  Son of Man.  Who was Jesus, really?  What was He like?  Maybe not like we think.


He was a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering.--Isaiah 53:3

Jesus didn't suffer only under the whips or on the cross; He was familiar with suffering.  He knew it well, and I am supposed to be like Him.  But I expect to be happy, to find goodness in daily living, to smile often and laugh with abandon, to know amusement and warmth and love.  I do not want familiarity with suffering.

Jesus tells me to be like Him, to follow Him, to die to myself and to be holy, that is, dedicated, to Him.  In theory, I agree.  Then He gives me a chance to do it.

I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled my beard.--Isaiah 50:6

Whenever the only discomfort at stake was His own, Jesus did not defend Himself.  Ever.  He defended the defenseless, He defended His Father, but He did not defend Himself.  And I am supposed to imitate Him.

Jesus was born sinless and died the same way.  I do not. I was born in sin and live there.  Opportunities to be falsely accused come rarely.  I am much more likely to be guilty than innocent.  But there are those times...those rare times....when I reap harsh treatment I didn't earn, when the only one hurt is myself.  In these come my opportunities to be like Him.  

Rather than leap to my own defense, I must bare my back and accept the stripes, not acting the martyr, but behaving like a child of the King. 

I know all too well that I am not like Jesus.  Please let me recognize the few chances I get to truly follow Him.  I will not see much goodness of men in this land of the living, but I will see His goodness.

How He Finishes It

The cross.  The lamb.  The blood.  There are levels of knowing. How can this horrible act remove my sin?  And where, then, does that forgiven sin go?

Every year I watch Jesus struggle His weary way up the hill, listen to the hammers, wait for the words, 'My God, My God..."  I know the reason for all this.  This horror, this terrifying travesty happened because I sinned, because we all sinned, and because God could not tolerate that.  He could not leave it alone.

God made the Jews kill sweet young lambs to repair this sin.  He made them cast out goats into the wilderness to die because of it.  He told His people that these innocent animals bore the sins of  men.  He made those same men sentence to death what would otherwise nourish them.

Then He sent Jesus.

Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.  He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.--1Peter 3:18.

So, by God's act and decree, what He did to Himself He also does in me.  Jesus Christ died, and so must I.  My corrupt body, my sin, what I am in this world must be put to death so that, like Christ, my Spirit can be raised up.


I must die to the world.  I must die to finish in me what Christ did for all.  As I recognize, confess, and repent of each sin, Christ takes them from me with hands both tender and bleeding, and absorbs them into His own wounds, carries them in His own flesh and blood, and they die there.

On the cross, my sins are carried as far as the east is from the west because Christ moves them from earth to Himself.  By this single act, He gathers sins daily from all confessing believers and transports them to the instant of His own death, a cataclysm shaking heaven and earth, and pronounces, "It is finished."

Glorified Sticks

At this season, a grapevine looks like a dead stick.  The vineyard keeper has ordered all last year's growth cut off, everything that flourished and brought last year's beauty removed.  What he has left stretches plain and unadorned, sad and without promise.  At least to my eyes.

But He looks at things differently.
He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will bear much fruit.--John 15:2

Much of what grows in me does not honor God, and He cuts it off because it is useless for His purpose.  He has other plans.  He intends to grow good grapes, and then turn them into wine, into His glory.  Everything whose end does not produce glory goes on the scrap heap.

This is my prayer...that you may be filled...with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.--Philippians 1:11

And, once the vineyard leafs out and begins to produce, God intends to join me in it.  He responds when I grow in Him:

Let my Lover come into His garden and taste its choice fruits.
"I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride."--Song of Solomon 4:16-5:1

This is His promise to me...to be held close and loved as valuable, to live with Him as His bride.  A time will come when pruning is long done.  The sun will shine and the grapes will hang full and ripe.  I will call to Him and He will answer me.  But until then, I am satisfied to be a beloved barren stick waiting for summer.

Light Reflected

A full moon changes the night.  Under its influence, darkness flies away and stars fade against its silver glow.  The glow captures imagination and spawns fables.  Mysterious and fleeting, a full moon makes even radiant sunlight seem common.

But the moon is, and will always be, the lesser light.  In fact, the moon is only a pale mirror, a thief of light from a greater source.

There will be no night here; they will need no candle, neither the light of the sun, for the Lord gives them light and they shall reign forever and ever.--Revelation 22:5

The Lord GIVES THEM LIGHT.  It comes from Him, not them.

I doesn't matter how wise I sound, how good I look, or how cleverly I achieve something.   I, too, am a thief of light. God's light.  This thievery has another name--pride.

Any time I think that something of worth begins with me or belongs to me, I steal credit for what came from God.  And worse, those stolen goods become a roadblock in my life with Him.

Jesus knew this and gave directions regarding what I should do with these stolen goods:
If you will be perfect, go and sell what you have and give it to the poor and you shall have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.--Matthew 19:21

I only possess what God possessed first, then in grace passed on to me.  What I most value never belonged to me in the first place.  I cannot love God, I cannot worship Him, I certainly cannot reach the heights of relationship He wants for me unless I get this down to my bones. 

I must acknowledge God as the source of all.  Everything depends on this.

What is most precious to me?  My dignity? My talents? My family? My work?  I don't own it.  At best, I get to use them for awhile.  At worst, they own me. 

My light may look pretty cool on a dark night, but that light, that pride, give no warmth, promote no growth.  My light is not mine.  It all comes from God and until I acknowledge Him as Source, I will walk away dejected like the rich young man of Matthew 19--fists clenched and empty.

Fighting with Myself

I don't know about you but when I got up this morning, I brushed my teeth, washed my face, got on the scale, took my vitamins, and picked out my clothes for the day.  I paid attention to any new aches, stretched my muscles and got ready to go to the gym.  I may have registered a new wrinkle or blemish.  I paid a lot of attention to my flesh and blood body.  Then I remembered.

While we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling so that what is mortal will be swallowed up in life.--2 Corinthians 5:4

This body will not last.  It does not house my life. My life comes from God.
In fact, my body ties me to sin.  

God has redeemed my soul.  He lives in me.  So my body, which is still corrupt, still dying, exists as a constant opponent to what lasts forever--my Life, my God.

Because my body does not bring me real life, I walk day after day in uneasy communion, frustration, and war. Until God redeems and restores my physical body as He has done for my soul, I will continue to do this.

My body is mortal--belonging to death.  God is Life. 

The Spirit of God lives in me and, as such, glorifies God.  It can do nothing else.  While I yet live in a body, my job is to remember that His Spirit can and must overcome my  body.  His Spirit is stronger because it came from Him and what life I have comes from that Spirit.

While I live, body and Spirit war constantly, but the Spirit conquers whatever indulgence I am tempted to grant the body.  This is the root and purpose of self-control.  I train my body, which dwindles to eventual dust, to obey my Spirit, which lives forever.

So I still brush my teeth, and try to stay fit, but remember that I cannot become more beautiful or more comfortable.  I will become less so the longer I live.  Not only will my body continue to decline, but as my Spirit becomes stronger, the tension between them will continue to build.  The war between them doesn't end while I live, but escalates as my body demands more and my Spirit grows in God.

We groan inwardly as we wait for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved.  Who hopes for what he already has?...If we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently.--Romans 8:23-25

Two Elizabeths and Me

I wonder what Queen Elizabeth thinks about being queen.  She has known all her life that she would reign in privilege.  It is part of who she is, but she didn't earn it.  She walked into it, inevitably, with every step, every breath.  All she had to do to be queen is to live.  No one ever expected her to do anything else.

And how about Elizabeth Taylor?

She had to have been strikingly beautiful from birth, her famous eyes causing gasps from the minute she opened them.  When did she discover that she had been given talent as well as beauty?  She did nothing to deserve either, but lived in the grace of them all her life.

When am I going to understand that I am no less privileged, no less blessed than either of them?  In fact, I am more.

I was chosen by the living God to be His own.

You did not choose me, but I chose you...John 15:16

God saved me and I worship Him.  God knows me and I know Him.  God loves me and I love Him.  He grants me this as a sublime privilege in this world.

After all, at the end of time, everyone will know and recognize God.  No one will be able to deny Him.  Now, however, He does not grant that vision to everyone.  He grants that vision, that knowledge, that salvation, to whom He chooses by His goodness alone, and by it we see Him while still in this world.


I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.--Psalm 27:13

You have saved me so that I can worship you.  I do not get to worship without salvation because with salvation comes knowledge and knowledge of God inevitably drives me to my knees.  If I truly worship, I am truly saved.  If I am truly saved, I truly worship.

I am either all in or all out.

I live, like the Elizabeths, as beauty and queen completely or not at all.  If God has granted His favor, I do not need to hide it and pretend that I am like those to whom He has not.  I need to grab all of it or reject it all.  I cannot say that I know and love God and live in condemnation.  I must be all God's or be nothing.

God designated me for this from the beginning of time.  I need to take hold of it.

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.--Philippians 3:12b 

What Love is Not

Faith in Christ.  Living the Christian life. Loving God and being loved by Him. How does anyone sum it up in a short sentence?  So often, we use John 3:16.  We see it everywhere--car bumpers, tee shirts, placards at football games.

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.--John 3:16

And so He did.

We think of our own children, of how we could possibly care enough for anyone or anything to give our children over to death for them.  We cannot conceive of it.  We love our children.  We hold them in our arms. We know their smell, their feel.  Their smiles bring us joy.

But it was not that kind of love that motivated God the Father to hand over Jesus to His executioners.  I am increasingly convinced that God does not act according to emotion.  Ever.

God feels emotion.  Jesus wept, after all, but God's feelings do not drive Him.  God knows that what He feels, and by extension what we feel, is not true love.

We tend to look at John 3:16 from our human perspective of sacrificing our own children's lives, of making them suffer for someone else's benefit, and it's true that God did that.  But a divine transaction also took place on Calvary.

God did not appoint Jesus for the cross, and Jesus did not climb onto that wood or accept the nails out of emotional love for us.  Emotional love is the way we most often try to understand Christ's sacrifice, but emotional love did not drive it.

Something else drives God, an eternal motivator determined from His own character and designated before time began.  God does what He does because His actions emerge from His character, His very Self, His holiness.  

Christ died not because God felt sorry for us but because God is God: righteous, powerful, sovereign, just.

God says He is love.  God's love is God's own Self, not feelings--not pleasure or displeasure, not likes or dislikes, not happiness or sadness.

God's love is determination to work out who He is.  He does what He does because He must.  He made His plan before the creation of the world.  "I will do this," He said, and does.

We can learn to do this, too.  In fact, He commands us to.  We have to, however, shift our eyes from our emotional heart to God's heart.  I love my husband not so much when we kiss or when I feel the rush of emotion but when I enact God's righteous plan for me as a wife.  I love my children more when I set my eyes on God than when I bake their favorite cookies.  I become a godly friend or employee when I look for God's unemotional, righteous heart in all situations and act accordingly.

I have to learn to unpack my idea of love from how I feel.  When we emotionally love, we are looking at one another.  Eternal love is seeking and finding God. 

This is love: not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Since God loved us, we also ought to love one another.--1John 4:10-11


Try reading the above passage like this:
This is love: not that we (feel emotion for) God, but that He (righteously acts toward) us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Since God (acts righteously toward) us, we also ought to (righteously act toward) one another.


And we can do this by fixing our eyes on Jesus and keeping them unwaveringly there.  This is true love.