The Caylor Family

One of my kids is going through a phase in which he needs to decide if he values truth and integrity or not. He has somehow gotten the idea that it isn’t quite lying if you just bend the truth, maybe twist things just enough to make it come out the way you want. Where do these kids get splitting hairs like a lawyer? I understand that this is part of the growing process. He needs to internalize what he’s been taught and decide in his heart if the things I’ve said are important. If in the end he believes that truth matters then his actions will reflect that. I pray and expect that he will come out the other side in the right direction. The process of talking to him about it has gotten me thinking about how the principles apply to so much of our lives.

You can’t “sort of” tell the truth. There isn’t any such thing as a half truth. You either tell the truth or you tell a lie. There isn’t anything in between.

As much as we’d like life to be full of gray areas, in many key areas it isn’t. You either tell the truth or your a liar. You either obey or you don’t. There isn’t any “sort of.” Forgiveness is that way too. You can’t half forgive. Either you forgive or you don’t. There is no such thing as half grace.

The Bible doesn’t cast any of these issues as shades of gray. 1 John tells us that if you hate your brother you’re a murderer. If you don’t obey him then you don’t love Christ. Jesus said that if we forgive, then we will be forgiven. “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.”

I think that a large part of the problem is that we don’t really understand these things, and we don’t really believe that its true. If my son believed that truth matters, he would tell the truth without trying to shape it, understanding that bending the truth immediately breaks it. Its just not bendable. We don’t know the meaning of truth and grace and forgiveness. I think that we don’t take these things seriously enough.

I am not saying that we are saved or gain favor with God through our actions. God is very clear that we are saved by grace, and we are loved by God because he is a loving and kind God who has chosen us to pour out his love and kindness on us because of who he is, not because of what we do.

On the other hand, when we understand the significance of the grace and mercy and kindness that we have been shown, and how little we deserve it, how can we hold back? How can we hold back grace when we understand the depth of God’s grace to us? How can we not forgive when we understand what we’ve been forgiven?

The parable of the treacherous servant who was forgiven his debt comes to mind here. His master forgave his debt, but then the servant turned around and demanded that another servant who owed him much less pay up. For him, there was a disconnect between being forgiven and forgiving others. His master called him on it, because there is no disconnect. If we understand how we have been forgiven, then we forgive. When we cannot forgive, we are that treacherous servant.

There is no “sort of” when it comes to following Christ. Either you are, or your aren’t. There is no such thing as a luke-warm Christian. The luke-warm are spit out. There is no such thing as one who understands how Christ has forgiven him, and then turns around and refuses to forgive. There is no such thing as one who understands the significance of truth and then casually bends it into lies. The message isn’t that if you want God’s mercy you must do right, but that if you understand God’s mercy you can not help but fall down before him and be changed.

Here’s my message to my kids, to myself, and to you: Is God your God or is he not? There is no half way. There is no “in theory” or “that’s the way its supposed to be, but…” Either you believe God and that all of his promises and statements are true, and the weight of that truth changes you, or you are an idolator and adulterer. If we understand that, if I understand that, then the only response I can imagine is surrender, grateful that I have not been ripped from the vine and cast into the fire.

Yesterday in church we sang a song that starts with these words: “Take not your spirit from me” (Take Me Higher by Lincoln Brewster). My first thought was “Of course he won’t. He doesn’t ever take his Spirit from us.” Then I realized that reaction is too quick. Not wrong, exactly, just incomplete.

There are a lot of things that we pray for that we know are already given to us. We pray for forgiveness, when we know he has forgiven us already. We pray for blessing, when we know he has already poured out every blessing on us. We pray for transformation, when we know that he has said that he will complete what he has started. We pray for righteousness, when we know that we already have been credited with the righteousness of Christ.

These are not misled prayers. Prayer is not a method to bend God’s actions to our desires. We pray because we know that he is the source of life and all that is good, and nothing that we can have that is good comes from anywhere else.

We also pray because we need, and God says that we should ask. This message appears a number of times in the Gospels. For example, in Luke 11:5-13 Jesus tells a story of a persistent friend, and then says “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Jesus is clearly saying we should ask God for what we need, and he says it in a variety of similar ways throughout the Gospels.

At the same time we know that God already knows about our every need. He has each hair of our head numbered. He knows each step we will take throughout our lives, every breath, every choice. He is already going to do what he has willed for our good. This is part of the mystery of God’s sovereignty and its interaction with our free will. Both are true. We are to ask, and he says that if we ask he will answer, and yet we know God has already determined to act for our good and knows what that will be.

Similarly, we should rest securely in the knowledge that we cannot be plucked from God’s hand, that our forgiveness and redemption is secure, that he will not take his Spirit from us, and at the same time be cognizant of the fact that we are even now saved purely by his grace. That is the message of Romans 11, where Paul points out that Israel was torn off because of their unbelief and we who were far from God were grafted in.

Then you will say, “The branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted! They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but fear! For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you. Notice therefore the kindness and harshness of God – harshness toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. (Romans 11:19-22 NET)

We know, of course, that we will not be cut off, that we cannot fall out of his kindness. But we should not take that for granted. The kindness we receive from him is not because of our merit, and we don’t suddenly start to deserve it on our own once he has made us clean. We don’t continue from there doing right. I add to the list of debts Christ payed on my behalf daily, and the cost of each of them is death. Each and every day Christ pours out his mercy and grace on me, and each and every day it is still as undeserved as it was at the first.

So now when I think of the words of the song “Take not your Spirit from me…” I can sing it not because I think he might, but because I come before him knowing that even now I do not deserve his Spirit. My heart is clean, it is the temple of the living God, and his Spirit dwells in me, not because I am good but because he is good. I don’t pray that because I think he might, but because I am aware that even now I am dependent on his grace.

The fear of the Lord as his child is different from the fear of one under judgement. I think that sometimes when we rest in the embrace of our Father we forget that it is still his arms that hold us there, and not ours. Like everything else that I know he has already determined to do for my good, I still will pray “Lord, don’t take your Spirit from me,” knowing that he never will, but deeply aware that it is eternally a gift out of his kindness and grace.

Some people are hard to love. Sometimes people do things that hurt us, and they aren’t ever going to be sorry. Sometimes people aren’t responsive at all when we try to reach out to them. Sometimes people do things that make them unworthy of love, or unworthy of respect. What is the right thing for us to do?

As Christ followers the easy answer is forgiveness, love, and grace, but that’s easy to say and hard to do in these situations. The case for love and grace being the right course is clear. God calls us to love as he has loved us, and of course God’s love for us precedes our repentance. “While we were still sinners,” we’re told, “Christ died for us.” He didn’t wait for our repentance to love us enough to sacrifice himself. Grace and forgiveness are not earned, they are given. If we expect payment, it isn’t grace. On top of that, we are to love our enemies, and do good to those who hate us. How do we do that?

Given that grace is given rather than earned, the extent to which the other person deserves forgiveness and love doesn’t help answer the question. If I find that I am struggling with giving grace and my response starts with “But he…” or “But she…” then I am looking for the other person to earn grace. Having the truth on our side doesn’t really help in these situations. In fact, sometimes we stress “truth” so much that its to the detriment of grace. We say things like “speak the truth in love!” Generally when we do that, it isn’t really about truth, or love. It’s just about being right. I think that’s often a symptom that our pride is getting in our way.

I’ve been noticing lately that our pride ensnares us a lot in this area. It seems like a lot of the times that we can’t find the path to forgiveness it has to do with feeling a lack of respect from the other person. Pride is often one of the hardest things to let go of when we need to forgive, especially when the other person isn’t apologetic or even recognizing that they’ve done wrong. When our pride is involved, it gets personal. This pops up when someone doesn’t recognize our rights or authority or areas of expertise, or pulls rank on us. It’s at the heart of our difficulty in forgiving people who take us for granted, or take advantage of us, or act entitled to things they have no right to demand of us.

Jesus said “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. If someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also.” (Luke 6:29 NLT) My difficulty in following this principle isn’t the physical injury to my cheek, or that I can’t bear to part with my shirt. My problem is that when someone slaps me or takes something from me, my pride is wounded. How dare they! I think this is true even of severe transgressions. We talk about attacks being dehumanizing or degrading. When it comes down to it, we often struggle to forgive because of pride as much or more than the other impacts of whatever was done to us.

I’m not saying that we aren’t really injured by attacks that also wound our pride. Remember that I’m talking about giving forgiveness and grace, and that these are not earned by the recipient. We don’t give grace because the slight was small or imagined. We give grace because God poured his grace on us even when we were dead in our sins. The magnitude of our sin against God isn’t diminished because he gives us grace. My sin is still sin. The penalty for my sin is still death. God’s grace didn’t diminish the payment. He just took the payment for my sin on himself. The grace I can give has little to do with the recipient or the wrongdoing that I forgive, and everything to do with me and my relationship to the well from which I can draw that grace.

Even so, isn’t it interesting that quite often the reason I can’t forgive you is because of the sin of pride in my own heart?

As a practical matter, I think we often nurse our wounds in ways that drag the process out. When we nurse our wounded pride, we aren’t really working toward the right resolution. We’re trying to rebuild our injured pride. The better goal, I think, is to give up on our right to our pride. I do not mean that we should say “It is ok for you to do that,” or to surrender our pride to our attacker. Rather, we should surrender our pride to Christ.

Instead, we often find ways to nurture self-righteous bitterness. We remind ourselves of the wrong done to us. We remind ourselves that we are in the right, and deserve better. This is hardest when the facts are on our side. The other person is clearly in the wrong, and they are likely to do it again. Shouldn’t we guard ourselves against that? Shouldn’t we take steps to make it right, to fix it? Shouldn’t we confront the other person’s sin so that maybe they’ll repent and maybe we can fix them?

Confronting sin in the body is an important Biblical principle, and one I think that we often misapply. There are two goals in confronting sin in the body: bringing a sinner to repentance and thereby turning them from death (James 5), and protecting the body of the Church (1 Corinthians 5). These issues have huge theological implications that I won’t try to get into here, but for the sake of this discussion the focus is practical: When you are struggling for grace and forgiveness, very likely your motives are not really the good of your brother or sister who has sinned, or protecting the Body. We often tell ourselves that we are wanting to bring the other person back from the brink of their sin, but in reality when we are the person who has been wronged what we almost always want is to be shown to have been right all along. As a practical matter of the health of the Body, confronting sin should generally be done by the leaders of the local body who are not themselves in the middle of the issue. When we are the person who has been wronged, we need to look to following Christ’s admonitions in Matthew 5 and Luke 6 in our own lives.

Think about this: if the person who has wronged you never repents, never turns from their sin, never even admits that what they have done is wrong, are you going to just hold onto your bitterness and hurt forever? That would mean allowing the other person to hobble your walk to maturity in Christ for the rest of your life. Clearly that’s not the answer. We need to find a path to grace and forgiveness not so much because the other person deserves it or even needs it, but because it is critical to our own spiritual health. That is hard enough for us without the burden of fixing the other person.

It is so hard for us to do, in fact, that we can’t do it on our own. When we are angry or unable to forgive because our pride has been wounded, we need to take that to Christ and ask him to help us. Part of that involves confessing that our pride is involved. When we have been wronged and we cannot find the path to true grace and forgiveness, we have to look to the Holy Spirit to provide grace so that we can bear his fruit.

As we turn to God to help us, there are a few things that we can do that ease that path. If we will remove some hindrances, we need less painful surgery. First, don’t dwell on the wrongs that have been done to you. Don’t bring it up. Especially avoid compounding your pride by gossip. Think about whatever is just and pure and lovely and commendable and praiseworthy instead. Stewed hurt and anger are more concentrated and harder to release. They build up our pride rather than letting it go. Put your focus on your walk with God, rather than the other person’s.

So many of us live our lives in bitterness, anger, hurt, and wounded pride. Allowing God to bring true forgiveness and grace to our hearts often involves confessing to him that we struggle with pride, and asking him to heal us of that as well.

I once had a boss who talked to someone else about me before he really knew me. They told him their opinion about me, which wasn’t great, and then he thought he knew all he needed to know. As it turned out, it didn’t even really matter in the long run if what he had been told was right or wrong. He assumed he knew what motivated me, and for the entire time I worked with him he interpreted everything I did to fit what he thought he knew about me. His relationship with me was filtered by what he had been told before he even really knew me. It got in the way of ever getting to know me as an actual person, and in the end it was too toxic for any productive relationship to ever develop.

Sometimes I think we do that with God. We can’t sit down with him at a kitchen table and ask him to tell us about his life. We read about him in the Bible. Some of us who are diligent or have years to spend on it learn a lot about God. Most of us learn about what he said from other people, second hand. We read books about him, or we listen to preachers. Those are good things, but they aren’t the same as having a relationship.

Knowing about someone is no substitute for knowing them personally.

Christianity does include theology, and religion, and learning, and world view. But those things aren’t the heart of our Christian life, if we are really walking with God. At the heart of our Christian life is a relationship with a real Person. I don’t believe and trust God because I’ve read that he’s there and that he’s powerful and trustworthy. I believe and trust God because I know him and I’ve seen what he is like and what he does in my life. That’s what real relationships are like.

I need to be careful to not give the impression that I think theology is bad. On the contrary, theology is very important. When we love someone we want to know all we can about them. God has told us a lot about himself in the Bible. If you love him, you will want to know what he’s said about himself. You’ll want to read about how he was faithful in the lives of countless others who have gone before. You’ll want to know what he’s said about what he wants and doesn’t want from us. Not only that, but you’ll want to help other people understand what he’s really like if they have misconceptions about him.

But we can’t substitute theology for relationship. Our theology is faulty. It is made up of human interpretation of what Scripture tells us. It involves human wisdom. These things are not perfect. Our best theology is flawed. There is so much that the Bible doesn’t tell us at length that we really want to know. So we make our theology systematic so that we can bring more sense to it. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is no substitute for knowing God. Don’t let your theology become your idol.

Here’s the thing. God is real. The Father is a real Person. The Holy Spirit is real too, and he’s acting today in your heart and mine. He illuminates Scripture to us. He speaks to our hearts. He leads us in our daily lives, if we’ll listen. He’s doing stuff, in you (if you belong to him) and all around you. He is all knowing, all powerful, fully present everywhere, and he loves you more than you can imagine. He’s not faithful and full of grace and forgiving and blessing you in some abstract philosophical sense. He’s really like that, really doing that, right now in your life. Don’t substitute theology and religion for knowing and experiencing true relationship with the real Person.

It is interesting to me that God has chosen to not be as clear as we would like him to be on some things. My son asks lots of questions about eternity. What was it like before God made the world? What will heaven be like? There’s plenty we just don’t know much about. It’s tempting to fill in the gaps. We would like to make end times prophecies more clear than God has made them. We’d like to understand the Trinity better, and to know more about the process of creation. I have tons of “Why?” questions that the Bible just doesn’t fully answer. It isn’t that God couldn’t have explained these things better. The Bible we have is exactly what he’s chosen to say in his Word.

Don’t start with your theology and then try to get God to fit in the box you’ve built for him. It doesn’t work. God is who he is, independent of whether or not we believe the right things about him or even believe in him at all. Many of the people who rejected Jesus when he came to Earth rejected him because he didn’t fit in the box of their theology. Wouldn’t it be a tragedy to be working so hard at being a good Christian that you leave out Christ, as a person with whom you can have an actual relationship? Theology is important, but it is much more important to know God than to know about God.

In your daily walk with him, don’t focus on religion and practices and lists and knowledge. Turn your heart toward God. When you read his Word, read it as one who is pursuing a relationship. Read what he’s said as if you’re reading something written for you by someone you love, rather than like you’re reading a history book or a manual.

The same God who you read about in the Bible is with you now. He hasn’t changed. What you believe about him doesn’t change who he is at all. God is real. He is actively at work today. He’s here, right now. He wants you to have a relationship with him personally, because he loves you personally.