“By those who come near to Me, I will be treated as holy and before all the people, I will be honored.” ~Leviticus 10:3
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.” ~Revelation 5:12
A revelation came to me a few years back while I was leading a prayer group. It began with the query, “How can God judge our disobedience?” Take it one more, “He made us imperfect before He ultimately judges our imperfection…and this is fair?” The misconception revolves around our notion of what fair, righteous or just looks like. As people who judge imperfectly, it can get godforsaken ugly! There is expectation and conditional love, self-righteous rejection because the person failed, let you down, can’t get it together! Even when all this relational catastrophe is legit because of severe human failings and tough love is the last ditch desperation to help someone help themselves, the vision does not exactly exude love. Unconditional love is so very invisible to our short-sighted eyes. People may love wholeheartedly, biblically, near perfectly…and it will come across just badly, hurting the trust between what had seemed a bond of love. What we see appears disgustingly judgmental. Key word: appears, as in “feels like”.
So when God says He is gonna get mad, and judge with viscious wrath and put us in our place as creature, not creator, and when He needs to set us straight or wake us up, we tend to resent it! We picture it on human terms: “Oh, He thinks He’s so great!”—“So, I’m not good enough for You, huh? Since I messed up, now You’re mad at me? What’s with the conditional love? Hey, sorry I’m not PERFECT like YOU!”
Here is my revelation: Get rid of the attitude. God does not “think He’s SO great.” He IS great and He knows He’s great—without the attitude. God IS and can be no other. I’m NOT “good enough” for Him and neither are you. He knows that! You and I should know that but kinda, we forget, because we have the attitude problem, not God! The best part…I’m not convinced God’s Almighty wrath is our equivalence. We get mad, impatient and testy! Our love can be horribly conditional. God is love. Our experience of the lack of God’s love (separation by denial, guilt, shame) is a feeling of God gone missing or “Oh great, God’s angry!” But God is the GREAT I AM and His love remains perfectly constant. His holiness prevents our ability to be close with Him. He is never pushing us away…we pull away in sin.
But maybe, just maybe He is not so mad. Maybe His judgment is not the cruel, harsh, scowling law enforcement officer at all! First, the policeman, everybody knows, ain’t perfect! Second, those caught in a crime or sin, will experience the ordeal as wrath unless they have trusted the justice system to be fair, repented and understood the consequences of their behavior. The Bible refers to God’s wrath because it will be very real to those who have not trusted Him. But let’s change the script. Because God is a constant and is who He is, there are limits, EVEN FOR GOD. How many times have you thought or heard someone say, “He can do anything He wants…He’s GOD!” Try picturing God’s judgment in this more “passive” capacity. He will enact Judgment Day when He deems it time. It is His will. Now everything we know of that is good and all evil will be sorted out, perfectly and completely. The power, the wealth, the wisdom, and ALL strength, everything honorable, glorious and all things we consider blessings—WILL BE DRAWN TO GOD WHO IS LOVE, GOD WHO IS HOLY!”
You guessed it! The powerless, poverty, ignorance, weak, the dishonorable i.e. not trustworthy, liars, the inwardly ugly and cursed things will be left alone and isolated. This is not because God hates the people with these attributes. These lost souls will be kept as they were on earth, in a solitary confinement, because no one can be trusted in hell. A selfish lot where no one holds up their end of the bargain, where laughter and fun are not likely, these sorry human beings will have no basis for relationship. Relationship is based in trust which is based in love. Pathetic humanity—inklings of which are seen on Earth (just as glimpses of heaven are),---magnified to the nth degree of misery. I shudder to think. Trouble is, we don’t think. God IS the description in Revelation 5:12. All things good and holy are God! Separation from Him is the absence and opposite of the goodness of El Shaddai.
In other words, it is the law of reality. It is a fact of life (and death). Not a theory, but a principle of Truth as solid as any Law of nature. It just IS! God’s condemnation, the consequence of disobedience, is eternal separation, division from God, who cannot change Himself and cannot force us to be good and holy in the perfect sense. He can only provide an option, a gift. Christ---the Anointed One. God can only welcome us in if we choose to wear the Righteousness of the Lamb who was slain…who IS worthy. God says, the creatures who have not been born spiritually are not worthy. He says it because He is the revealer of TRUTH without the ‘tude.
“How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.” ~Revelation 5:12
A revelation came to me a few years back while I was leading a prayer group. It began with the query, “How can God judge our disobedience?” Take it one more, “He made us imperfect before He ultimately judges our imperfection…and this is fair?” The misconception revolves around our notion of what fair, righteous or just looks like. As people who judge imperfectly, it can get godforsaken ugly! There is expectation and conditional love, self-righteous rejection because the person failed, let you down, can’t get it together! Even when all this relational catastrophe is legit because of severe human failings and tough love is the last ditch desperation to help someone help themselves, the vision does not exactly exude love. Unconditional love is so very invisible to our short-sighted eyes. People may love wholeheartedly, biblically, near perfectly…and it will come across just badly, hurting the trust between what had seemed a bond of love. What we see appears disgustingly judgmental. Key word: appears, as in “feels like”.
So when God says He is gonna get mad, and judge with viscious wrath and put us in our place as creature, not creator, and when He needs to set us straight or wake us up, we tend to resent it! We picture it on human terms: “Oh, He thinks He’s so great!”—“So, I’m not good enough for You, huh? Since I messed up, now You’re mad at me? What’s with the conditional love? Hey, sorry I’m not PERFECT like YOU!”
Here is my revelation: Get rid of the attitude. God does not “think He’s SO great.” He IS great and He knows He’s great—without the attitude. God IS and can be no other. I’m NOT “good enough” for Him and neither are you. He knows that! You and I should know that but kinda, we forget, because we have the attitude problem, not God! The best part…I’m not convinced God’s Almighty wrath is our equivalence. We get mad, impatient and testy! Our love can be horribly conditional. God is love. Our experience of the lack of God’s love (separation by denial, guilt, shame) is a feeling of God gone missing or “Oh great, God’s angry!” But God is the GREAT I AM and His love remains perfectly constant. His holiness prevents our ability to be close with Him. He is never pushing us away…we pull away in sin.
But maybe, just maybe He is not so mad. Maybe His judgment is not the cruel, harsh, scowling law enforcement officer at all! First, the policeman, everybody knows, ain’t perfect! Second, those caught in a crime or sin, will experience the ordeal as wrath unless they have trusted the justice system to be fair, repented and understood the consequences of their behavior. The Bible refers to God’s wrath because it will be very real to those who have not trusted Him. But let’s change the script. Because God is a constant and is who He is, there are limits, EVEN FOR GOD. How many times have you thought or heard someone say, “He can do anything He wants…He’s GOD!” Try picturing God’s judgment in this more “passive” capacity. He will enact Judgment Day when He deems it time. It is His will. Now everything we know of that is good and all evil will be sorted out, perfectly and completely. The power, the wealth, the wisdom, and ALL strength, everything honorable, glorious and all things we consider blessings—WILL BE DRAWN TO GOD WHO IS LOVE, GOD WHO IS HOLY!”
You guessed it! The powerless, poverty, ignorance, weak, the dishonorable i.e. not trustworthy, liars, the inwardly ugly and cursed things will be left alone and isolated. This is not because God hates the people with these attributes. These lost souls will be kept as they were on earth, in a solitary confinement, because no one can be trusted in hell. A selfish lot where no one holds up their end of the bargain, where laughter and fun are not likely, these sorry human beings will have no basis for relationship. Relationship is based in trust which is based in love. Pathetic humanity—inklings of which are seen on Earth (just as glimpses of heaven are),---magnified to the nth degree of misery. I shudder to think. Trouble is, we don’t think. God IS the description in Revelation 5:12. All things good and holy are God! Separation from Him is the absence and opposite of the goodness of El Shaddai.
In other words, it is the law of reality. It is a fact of life (and death). Not a theory, but a principle of Truth as solid as any Law of nature. It just IS! God’s condemnation, the consequence of disobedience, is eternal separation, division from God, who cannot change Himself and cannot force us to be good and holy in the perfect sense. He can only provide an option, a gift. Christ---the Anointed One. God can only welcome us in if we choose to wear the Righteousness of the Lamb who was slain…who IS worthy. God says, the creatures who have not been born spiritually are not worthy. He says it because He is the revealer of TRUTH without the ‘tude.
“How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
~Hebrews 9:14
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