The Deception of Glory

"How can you believe in me when you receive glory from one another and don’t seek the glory that comes from the only God?"

                                                                               Jesus, as recorded in John 5:44

The church is the community of those individuals who are content to have God on their side, regardless of who else is.  They are individually belief-and-behavior committed to Christ, entirely in His hand for His will, regardless of if it is popular or if people join them.  And it is each of their individual commitment therein that gives them a collective identity with others who share the commitment.  They know that Christ is enough moving forward, but they are delighted to know that Christ has also given them many more who are with them in this conviction.

Starving to be affirmed

Our media-driven culture today perpetuates a systemic neediness for affirmation.  Facebook and Twitter thrive on users sharing things from their lives so that the things will be liked by others.  Sadly, I see Christians all the time sharing recent good deeds they’ve done, clearly in hopes of touting their goodness and receiving affirmation from others.  It is one thing to share the joy of a church service project, but quite another to blog or post about what I did today that was good to a person or people.  Jesus says a few things about this – ie. If we practice our righteousness among others to be seen by them, we’ve already received our reward (Matt. 6:1, 16); further, we are not to “let our left hand know what our right hand is doing” when we have given to those in (any kind of) need (Matt. 6:3).  Hearing others say, “Great job!” or “You’re such a good person” or “We need more people like you” will feel good at the time, but it will be the only reward we receive.  In the end we’ll appear before God and not be able to appeal to those good deeds as reason to be invited into the Heavenly City we all long for (cf. Matt. 7:21-23).  And we will certainly try to, if earning affirmation is what we're after.  But it will be futile.

Affirmation blinds

In John 5, we find a statement Jesus made to those who were refusing to believe in Him to receive eternal life.  Jesus had recently said at several points that eternal life is received by simply believing in Him (Jn 3:14-16, 5:24); thus anyone who simply sees Him for who He is and entrusts themselves to Him in submissive faith will be guaranteed all of God’s love and kindness for forever. 

But these people to whom He spoke wouldn’t believe.  And Jesus goes further in 5:44, by telling them that they couldn’t believe.  What a jarring statement.  But it is true – much like people focused on the world can’t submit to God’s truth (Rom. 8:7-8) or receive the things of God’s Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14), so these people to whom Jesus spoke couldn’t believe in Him.  Why?  Because they receive glory from one another and don’t seek the glory of God.

It is interesting that Jesus doesn’t speak of giving affirmation/glory to others as a catalyst for unbelief.  Affirming others is a good thing – Paul says we are to give honor to where honor is due (Rom. 13:7), and constantly consider ourselves as debtors to love others (13:8).  Affirming what is good builds the good-doer up.  But it is the need for receiving glory that makes one unable to believe in Christ.  It appears here that Jesus is making a profound statement: Dependence upon the opinions of others hardens one from being able to believe in Christ, because Christ’s redemption is first and foremost a redemption attached to God’s opinion. 

God's affirmation

And what does God say about people?  “There is none who does good” (Rom. 3:12); “No one seeks after God, they’ve all turned aside” (Ps. 14:2).  None can claim to be right with God – thus, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin’?” (Prov. 20:9).  And “If the Lord should mark iniquities, who could stand?” (Ps. 130:3)  

Dealing with God’s opinion is traumatic.  But it is necessary.  This is why Jesus was saying to His audience that they couldn’t believe – they only care about others’ opinions, and so they couldn’t be concerned with God’s.  And the subtle thing about caring about others’ opinions is that you will only care about some others’ opinions: those with whom you agree, and who have proven trustworthy by your own standard.  Jesus came to reconcile sinful people - fools - with a holy God who loved them even when they were unlovable.  But Jesus' coming to do this strikes a hard blow to those with such grandiose views of self that they don't think they need help.  

Throwing Other Believers Under the Bus =/= Christlike-ness

I’m grieved at how many people in my millennial generation are, in the name of Christ, seeking to be conciliatory with the world at the expense of throwing other believers under the bus.  Do brothers and sisters really think that’s going to make converts?  Or do they even care about converts?  Perhaps they just want to be liked.  It is sometimes necessary to challenge believers who's actions are robbing others of the joy God wants for them.  Thus honesty among God's people is critical.  "Let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor" (Eph. 4:25).  But be the same brand of real with the broader secular culture today, too.  And don’t use the excuse that “Well Jesus didn’t condemn the adulteress woman.”  In one sense, yes he did – He told her to go and sin no more (Jn. 8:11); His saying, “Neither do I condemn you” was a picture of the reality of His redemption of sinners: He bears punishment for them, and lets them go free to live for Him, given they’ll see their need for repentance clear enough to repent.

But didn’t He also challenge the religious establishment and pronounce “whoa’s” on them?  Yes.  But he also called a woman a dog for apparently putting herself ahead of Israel in the redemptive pecking order (Matt. 15:26); he also called his generation twisted (Matt. 17:17); and finally, in the face of a recent tragedy grieved by multitudes, He responded, “That’ll be you if you don’t repent” (Lk. 13:3, 5 paraphrasing).  Simply read in John 4 of his conversation with the Samaritan woman to see how politically incorrect He is about this woman’s crooked life which had spun out of control.

Don’t call yourself loving if you won’t tell the world of the whole Christ.  Jesus did not and does not gloss over the truth because it is offensive to an ever-shifting cultural conscience.  If He challenged religious people who were getting in the way of lost people coming to Him – ie, Matt. 23:13 – it was so that those to whom He spoke – the lost – would be saved (Jn. 5:34).  This is why Paul said later that Christ became a servant to the Jewish people that the nations would glorify God for His mercy (Rom. 15:8-9) – yes, Jesus was hard at times with His teaching, but it was so that lost people would be saved.  And don't forget - He was honest with the lost people too.

We Christians, like everyone, often have logs in our eyes which blind us so that we can only see the speck in someone else's.  Thus our task should be to present Christ, the whole Christ, and nothing but the Christ, confident that He will deal with people, religious or irreligious, in His saving way.  But we only will present Him faithfully if we don’t need the people to agree with us and love us.  We must pick a side.  

In the end, Eliphaz’s words to his friend Job are still instructive: “Agree with God, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you” (Job 22:21).  It isn’t about peoples’ opinions of us, or even their opinions of God.  The message is to be slanted toward God-centeredness, highlighting the peace He offers to those who will let themselves in on the freedom of His truth.  Our job is to let Him be who He is.  And if we will, Jesus will build His church. 

Christianity the same today as it was yesterday

When Jesus promised His disciples they’d be persecuted for His sake, He wasn’t saying Judeo-Christian morals would not be accepted in an increasingly socially liberal world, or that religious views would make the one who holds them an outsider.  He was saying that those who love Him and want to fan His glory into their world will automatically be out of sync with their world, regardless of it’s cultural moment.  This is because He is out of sync with the world, regardless of it’s cultural moment, and this will never change until He returns.

Jesus’ being out of sync with the world is why the Apostle Paul called the message of the cross of Christ “foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:18).  Most people today, believer or skeptic, would have a hard time referring to the Christian message of salvation as “foolish.”  It certainly seems like too offensive a word to use!  But Paul, by most estimations the champion of the cross message, referred to the cross as “folly” and “the foolishness of God” (1 Cor. 1:23, 25).  Paul was admitting that, by any majority’s cultural standards, the idea that the only hope the world has is a bleeding Savior being executed and then risen again is complete absurdity.  People want political, social, economic power; but God's way to save the world is through His Son giving Himself up to death on a Roman execution stake.  And Biblical Christianity teaches that this enterprise of death and resurrection reversed the curse that everyone in the world invariably feels in themselves and their world.

To be a Christian is not necessarily to hold certain ethical or moral principles, to vote a certain way, or to feel certain sympathies or sensibilities toward a people group.  It is to believe that the only hope for the world is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  That His bloody death happened to save undeserving people from the just judgment of a holy God, and that in dying to rise He was, in love, defeating the world’s agenda of victory through intimidation and coercion. 

If America is still moving in a more socially liberal direction (which I believe it still is and will), Jesus will remain out of sync with it.  If it were today, post-2016-election, moving in a more socially conservative direction, Jesus would still be out of sync with it as well.  Jesus is a friend of sinners, but that only matters to the one who wants to talk about sin.  He’s a friend of presidents, politicians, and rulers too.  But similarly, that fact only matters to one who is willing to accept that those positions come from God (Jn. 19:11; Dan. 2:21), and ultimately exist for Jesus, to point the way to Him and His authority (Col. 1:16).  One can be a friend of Jesus’, but only if they’ll in fact accept Him for who He is: King of kings and Lord of lords.

This morning Ray Ortlund, a pastor whom I’ve never met but have enormous respect for and learn a lot from, tweeted something to the effect that the only thing that changed for Christians overnight was the political identity and power block to which we will speak with a Gospel voice.  That will always be the case, because Jesus, with His Word of truth, is always out of sync with the world, regardess of who is in power.  And our responsibility is to fan His glory and goodness into our world.

When the power is more liberal-minded, Jesus stands as a prophet telling people to take sin seriously and to repent into His costly grace with the assurance that they’ll be welcomed and changed into His likeness by His great mercy.  When the power is more conservative, He bends down as a servant of mankind, challenging the powers that be with the truth that He has come to be a servant to the poor, downcast, and downtrodden, and that He stops at nothing to love His reality into people, instead of beating it into their heads by force.

I’m not worried.  I’m optimistic.  I believe that Jesus is alive today and He comes with good news to those who look around and feel that there is none.  And I believe that many, regardless of their voting status yesterday, feel dirty enough after this election cycle to perhaps listen to One who promises to, as Tolkien reminds us, make everything bad come untrue.  But you’ll only hear Him if you’ll listen to a Word that is and will remain foolish.  Somehow it’s foolishness, especially in our times, makes it all the more attractive.