Do I make broad what is narrow?

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14, NIV)

These words were brought to mind recently listen to someone opine about the love of God. The gist of the argument this person was making was that if God loves us, he would never hold against us such minor things as the kinds of sins most of us do. It would really be unfair and disproportionate to leave in the power of the devil those who do not conform — or aspire to conform — to a high standard of holiness.

And as pleasing as this sounds to my ears, I cannot avoid thinking of Scripture passages that appear to say the very opposite. The above from the Sermon on the Mount stands out the most clearly to me.

The biblical witness appears to describe a black and white choice. With apologies to Adam Hamilton, the Scripture does not appear to see much gray. There is a way of life and there is a way of death.

In his sermon on the two verses at the top of this post, John Wesley pointed out just how broad the way of death is:

For sin is the gate of hell, and wickedness the way to destruction. And how wide a gate is that of sin! How broad is the way of wickedness! The “commandment” of God “is exceeding broad;” as extending not only to all our actions, but to every word which goeth out of our lips, yea, every thought that rises in our heart. And sin is equally broad with the commandment, seeing any breach of the commandment is sin. Yea, rather, it is a thousand times broader; since there is only one way of keeping the commandment; for we do not properly keep it, unless both the thing done, the manner of doing it, and all the other circumstances, are right: But there are a thousand ways of breaking every commandment; so that this gate is wide indeed.

Now we recoil at this description of God and our status before him. I have long lost count of the number of people who have told me that talking about sin with people is the surest way to turn them away from God. I have to admit that all the talk and my own natural inclination to get along with people and not offend has kept me from preaching about the topic nearly as much as John Wesley would have me do it.

In the end, though, my people pleasing side just cannot shut up the voice of Scripture. Both testaments speak of the holiness of God in very clear terms. Neither describes a large mushy gray area between the way of life and the way of death, the holy and the unholy, the righteous and the wicked. As much as we Wesleyans like to talk about both/and, the Scripture trades in a lot of either/or talk about these issues.

So, then, how can I be a faithful preacher and proclaimer of Scripture and not draw attention to passages such as Matthew 7:13-14 and the other places where Scripture teaches us to mind where we tread?

Fish for the furnace

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that people threw into the lake and gathered all kinds of fish. When it was full, the pulled it to the shore, where they sat down and put the good fish together into containers. But the bad fish they threw away. That’s the way it will be at the end of the present age. The angels will go out and separate the evil people from the righteous people, and will throw the evil ones into a burning furnace. People there will be weeping and grinding their teeth. (MT 13:47-50, CEB)

Two thoughts that I cannot escape based on the many passages similar to this in the New Testament.

Thought 1: There will be a sorting, a judgment. In that sorting we find only two categories ever mentioned. We find no gray, middle category of mostly righteous or only sort of wicked people. At least not one I can find anywhere in the New Testament. The Bible, however, is not really clear on where the fault line is between the good fish and the bad. Much of the differences among Christians might be fruitfully analyzed in terms of how bad a fish you have to be before they think you are heading for the furnace.

Thought 2: It is not my job to do the sorting. This is the work of Jesus and his angels. The net will haul us all in together. While I don’t think such a realization is an excuse to ignore church discipline, it is a relief for those of us who sometimes mistakenly assume Jesus appointed us to go around sniffing the fish to figure out which ones have gone bad.

 

An Earnest Appeal: The pardon of Christ

In a previous post, I wrote about the nature of faith as described in John Wesley’s “An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion.” Here we look at the role of Christ in the religion of love that Wesley expounds in that pamphlet.

Wesley had described faith as like growing a new set of spiritual eyes. It is by grace being given the perception of God and the things of God. When we have this faith, Wesley wrote, we experience a radical change that breaks sin, implants peace, and saves us.

But this talk of being saved by faith must have raised some objections. Where was the work of Christ in this faith and religion that Wesley was describing? The answer to this question lead to some of the more interesting passages in the entire pamphlet.

Wesley’s argument on this topic arises out of his discussion of assurance. In describing faith, he closely connects it with assurance, which makes sense as he defines faith in terms of Hebrews 11 — a confidence or evidence or conviction of things not seen. Having confidence in the love of God is the very definition of faith as Wesley describes it here.

But that confidence arises not, again, from some sort of intellectual assent to a doctrine or argument. The confidence arises as we experience the love of God. That love that we experience — Wesley will use the words know and feel — is the love of a forgiving and pardoning God. We know that God loves us because we have witnessed by faith the forgiveness of God.

Pardoning love is still at the root of all. He who was offended is now reconciled. … A confidence then in a pardoning God is essential to saving faith. The forgiveness of sins is one of the first of those things whereof faith is the evidence.

Wesley writes elsewhere of the atoning work of Christ and the death of Christ as the meritorious cause of our justification. Here, however, he contends for the experience of Christ’s forgiveness rather than the doctrine of it.

In some circles, the description of it all these concepts — faith, pardon, the nature of religion — appears to run like this. We hold a mental commitment that Christ died for us. This is called faith. Because of this faith, we appropriate the forgiveness of sins that Jesus accomplished on our behalf on the cross. This makes us new creatures. We strive to live as God’s people.

This is how I hear it working for Wesley, at least in this pamphlet. We are blind. We do not see God. Even if we are zealous for every outward thing of religion, inside we are dead and blind to God. As a consequence, we are ill at ease. We are anxious. We are not happy in God. We are sin plagued and sin sick. By the grace of God, our dead eyes are opened. Our deaf ears are unstopped. We come to see and hear what before was hidden from us by sin. Among the things that we witness are the forgiving and pardoning love of God through Jesus Christ. Because he loves us, we find our hearts filled with the love of God, spilling over and out to the love of every man, woman, and child. And as we abide in this love, we grow in holiness.

The notes Wesley plays are the same as most evangelical theology, but the arrangement and key are different.

At least, this is how I read his argument in this particular piece of writing. My reading may be off, or he may have later modified his own understanding, but I find his approach defies the easy formulas that I often see us trying to cram him into. This is why I keep reading him.

Ezekiel 33 and the UMC

If I pronounce a death sentence on wicked people, and you don’t warn them to turn from their way, they will die in their guilt, but I will hold you responsible for their blood. (Ezekiel 33:8, CEB)

John Wesley alluded to this verse often. He felt the words were true and they were directed not just at Ezekiel, but at him. If he did not warn and rebuke those who were violating the law of God, John Wesley believed he would be held liable in the great judgement for the blood of those who went to eternity without his word in their ears.

Of all the ways we United Methodists in 2012 are different from Mr. Wesley, this strikes me as one of the greatest. As a church we simply do not share the beliefs that give this verse its bite. Many of us find the very notion of God’s eternal judgement old fashioned, rooted in a primitive worldview that is no longer persuasive in the 21st century. Even more spend as much time and energy as we can convincing non-Christians that we are not like “those” Christians who tell them God does not approve of hedonism.

But how is such a view safe, let alone scriptural?

In the old Methodist movement, John Wesley used to defend the work of Methodism by pointing to all the sinners who had been reformed. He took great pride, it seems to me when I read his journals, in taking note of village and towns where all manner of sin was embraced openly before the Methodists started preaching there. He always notes the change — and sometimes laments the failures — when Methodism took hold in such a place.

What do we point to in the UMC? Are there places where our presence rolls back evil? Does our witness anywhere warn the wicked, or is the blood of millions on our hands still?

Jesus as cognitive psychologist

It turns out Jesus understood human psychology pretty well.

An interesting article in The New Yorker looks at the way our patterns of thinking lead us astray. This problem is especially pronounced among those who score higher on standard tests of intelligence. In other words, smart people are more prone to bad thinking.

The part that got me thinking about Jesus, though, was this paragraph:

Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves. Although the bias blind spot itself isn’t a new concept, West’s latest paper demonstrates that it applies to every single bias under consideration, from anchoring to so-called “framing effects.” In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.

I found myself thinking about planks in the eye and being told to judge not lest ye be judged. (Jesus always speaks King James when I think of such things.)

The lesson is simple as it is old, and it is one I find myself in need for being taught.

Leaving our best club in the bag?

It was late at night. I could not sleep. I was channel surfing. And there was Billy Graham. He was preaching in a stadium. He was talking about heaven and hell and reminding the crowd that they will all die. He urged them to make a decision that day for Christ.

It was precisely the kind of sermon I had never heard in a United Methodist Church. That is not to say such sermons are never preached. I’ve just never heard one from a United Methodist pulpit. In all honesty, I would not have welcomed it for several years of my church attending life.

But as I was listening to Billy Graham, I found myself thinking about his pitch and why we mainliners do not preach it.

Bell, Hell, and six key questions

Morgan Guyton asks six questions from the Hell debate raised by Rob Bell’s book Love Wins.

When the king returns

I believe … in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. (Apostles’ Creed, traditional Methodist version)

What does it mean to say Jesus will judge the living and the dead?

I know what Revelation says.

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

We will judged by our deeds. We are saved by grace through faith, but it is how we live that Jesus considers in the final day. He told us so much during his days in Galilee and Jerusalem.

What we do matters. Everything we do. The food we feed the hungry matters. The mercy we extend our enemies matters. But so do our sins matter. To march up before the throne of God with a heart full of rebellion and righteous indignation that anyone would hold your “shortcomings” against you is folly.

The New Testament teaches only one way to be forgiven for our sins.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10, NIV)

In other words and in other places it says the same thing. The death of Jesus on the cross was a spilling of blood for forgiveness of our sins. The apostles all teach this in one way or another.

Our deeds matter, and because that is the case our sins matter. We do not offset sin by so many extra hours of good works. Feeding another hungry family does not remove the darkness of sin. Indeed, trying to bargain with God in this way may be itself sin.

We confess. We repent. We cry out for forgiveness from a broken and contrite heart. We depend on the cross of Christ to cleanse us from the stain that we cannot remove ourselves no matter how hard we try.

Freed by the mercy and grace of God from the guilt of our sins and released from the grip of sin by Christ, we live as children of God whose love spills forth in all manner of good works. We write many chapters in the book of life, but only because God has done for us what we could never do for ourselves.

Rescue the perishing

What responsibility do we bear for the eternal and temporal destiny of others?

John Wesley felt a great responsibility. It was a motive force of much of his work. To see a sinner bound for Hell and do nothing to divert them was a violation of the law of love. To watch a man sink and not at least try to throw them a life preserver was sin.

If we neglect to reprove any of these, when a fair opportunity offers, we are undoubtedly to be ranked among those that “hate their brother in their heart.” And how severe is the sentence of the Apostle against those who fall under this condemnation! “He that hateth his brother,” though it does not break out into words or actions, “is a murderer:” And ye know,” continues the Apostle, “that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” He hath not that seed planted in his soul, which groweth up unto everlasting life: In other words, he is in such a state, that if he dies therein, he cannot see life. It plainly follows, that to neglect this is no small thing, but eminently endangers our final salvation.(Full sermon here.)

I don’t hear many of us speak that way.

Part is because we don’t really believe in Hell – not many of us. If all that is stake in the gospel is missing out on some good principles for living your life, then turning away when someone else is living in rebellion to God and the gospel is not nearly so grave a matter. They can turn on Dr. Phil, after all, and get pretty good advice about such things.

Indeed, if nothing more weighty than some self-improvement is at stake, we are foolish to intercede. We might come across as pushy or religious and turn them away from us. One more potential church member lost because we insisted on speaking of eternal things with them.

But if pastors are responsible for people in their spiritual care and if Christians in general are responsible for all the lives closely bound to theirs that they refuse to try to save, then we are in a bad way. We wash our hands of other people’s souls quite easily.

What I wish I had said

I’m one of those people who always thinks of the thing I wish I had said three minutes after a conversation ends.

The other day a person was talking about some people whose conduct was upsetting. The person said, “Enjoy your time in Hell.”

At the time, I said we should always pray for people. I wish I had been stronger in what I said.

I wish I had said that Christians never, never take any satisfaction or joy in the thought of anyone being condemned to Hell. Doing so is the opposite of loving our neighbor. Whether a person stand or falls is between them and their Lord. We do not condemn anyone to Hell and do not wish it for anyone. We do not relish the thought of anyone suffering under the power of sin and death in this life or suffering through eternity.

I pray I will be quicker to speak next time.