100 - O that I knew where you could be found!

When we looked earlier in this series at forgiveness, we saw that it operates in respect of offense, or sin. We reminded ourselves that sin has two consequences. First, it puts the offender in a place of debt in relation to the one offended (not necessarily financial debt, but in a place of obligation to make reparation in some way for the sin committed). Second, as long as the offence is not covered over through forgiveness, it injures the relationship between the offender and the one offended. 

In this meditation, we want to look at the believer's relationship with God in this world, and see how it may be affected depending on circumstances, one of which will be the sin of the believer. 

The first thing that we need to say on this topic is that the the bond between God and the believer is indissoluble. A true child of God cannot sin their way out of being His child, nor do anything else that will change their standing as those redeemed by God with the blood of Christ on the cross. A moment's thought is enough to help us understand this. The idea that God's only Son would have laid down His life to provide the possibility of ransom from sin, but with no certainty that any would actually be saved through His sacrifice, is clearly absurd. Then God would have unleashed His judicial wrath against Jesus on the cross for the sins of people who may actually reject salvation, deciding they would rather keep their sins and receive God's wrath upon themselves. These sins would then be doubly punished, first in Christ on the cross and then in the unbeliever in hell. This cannot justly be the case. Furthermore, If no-one is infallibly saved by the death of Christ, then God is not truly sovereign. He doesn't know who will be saved and who will not, and it is entirely up to sinful man to weigh things up and decide whether or not to do God a favor by allowing Jesus to save them. But at any time, that person could change their minds and decide to return to a life of sin in this world. This empties the Gospel of any power. It makes God a weak deity who is doing his best to save people but it's entirely up to them whether they decide to be saved or not. It makes a mockery of the cross and of the gospel.

If a saved person cannot be unsaved by their own efforts, it is also true that God has so bound Himself to His children that He can't later decide to renounce them, disown them and cast them away from Himself. This is not because of who they are, or any innate skills or standing they might have, but because of Who God is. He has promised that all who turn from sin and believe in Him will be saved. It is unthinkable that He would break any promise that He has given. For sinners, promises are broken because of their frailty. They lack the ability to keep them, the consistency to sustain them indefinitely, even the lifespan to maintain them beyond their years on earth. God has no such limitations. He has the power, the means, the inclination, the changelessness and the eternality of being to keep every promise He has ever made or ever will make. This is Who He is - it is His character and His nature. So with every promise that He makes, He puts His good Name - His character and reputation - on the line. So God simply will not allow His promises to fail - because He never makes "pie crust promises" (those that are made to be broken). Rather, He makes them with infinite purpose, wisdom and integrity, with every intention to uphold them all, and with all the resources needed to do so. In addition, He is jealous for His Name and His reputation and will not allow it to be harmed by making a promise and subsequently letting it fall to the ground. 

It is important to establish this at the outset, because the two circumstances we are going to consider in the remainder of this post are those which cause true believers to question if they are God's children at all (even though they are, given the arguments above), or merely self-deceived. In both cases, the believer loses his or her sense of God's presence with them - of His smile upon them. In both cases, they may cry out, with Job, the words in the title of this post. But most importantly, in both cases it is not the authenticity of their relationship with God that changes but rather their perception, or enjoyment of it. 

If you have a concordance or similar tool, it's instructive to search for verses in the Bible where "hid", "hide" or "hides" occur along with "face". I just did this recently and the result was astonishing. What emerged was a long list of Scriptures (perhaps 100 in total) in which either God threatened He would hide His face from His people in response to their sin, and his people cry out because He has kept His word in this regard, or in which God hid His face from His children but they had no understanding of why this had taken place.

So the two sets of circumstances we are talking about are those in which:

• we sin and God's Spirit is grieved and His influences in us are quenched; and 
• for God's own wise and inscrutable purposes He hides Himself from us - often to teach us our need of Him and to draw our hearts out after Him.

The effects of our sin on the enjoyment we have in the Lord

It is very plain in Scripture that the believer who sins willfully against the Lord may lose the sense of His presence with them and His smile upon them. We need to speak of willful sin here because everyone in this world sins unconsciously in thought, word and deed countless times every day. When the Spirit makes us aware of these sins, we quickly and gladly confess them and renounce them, and they are covered and forgiven in Christ. In contrast, willful sins are premeditated and committed in full knowledge that they are wrong and will offend our God and Savior. These sins are the ones most likely to quench and grieve the Spirit Who dwells in us, so that we lose our sense of His presence and our joy in his salvation.

We already reviewed what happened at the fall. Adam and Eve sinned against God and were banished from His presence. Although God took immediate steps to cover their shame through blood sacrifice, their relationship with Him was put on an entirely different footing from that moment on. They were forgiven, yes, but the consequences of their sin endured and countless others were born under the curse that they had brought upon humanity and upon all creation.

Think also of David and the premeditated adultery and  murder he committed in the matter of Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah. It's clear from David's Psalm of confession over his sin that he knew his relationship with God had been injured:

Psalm 51:7-12  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8  Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. 9  Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10  Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11  Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. 

He felt crushed. He felt the uncomfortable sense that God was holding his sins in full view. He felt dirty in God's presence, and desperately wanted to feel clean again. He wanted to re-discover joy and gladness in the Lord. He had lost the joy he had known in God's salvation. And over all this he felt that God had withdrawn from Him and that it was possible that the Spirit would be taken away from him. What a wretched state his sin had brought him into! How separated from God he felt! Note, though, that he had not and could not lose his salvation. The moment Nathan confronted him about his sin, David acknowledged his sin and repented, and God assured David through Nathan that his sins had been taken away:

2 Samuel 12:13-14 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.”

And yet David still suffered consequences for his sin, as is clear in the passages above, and one aspect of this was to experience this sense of the injury he had done to his joyful experience of the Lord on account of his sin.

What David did may be called "grieving the Spirit", or "resisting the Spirit" (see Isaiah 63:10, Psalm 78:40, Acts 7:51). See also this warning from Paul to the Ephesians:

Ephesians 4:29-32 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

The job of the Spirit in the life of a believer is to make them more holy - more separate from sin and more like the Lord Jesus. When we set ourselves on a path of deliberate sin, we grieve God's Spirit and our perception of His influences, together with our assurance of and joy in salvation, will decrease.

Note, too, the Scriptures that tell us that if we cherish sin in our hearts, God will not hear our prayers:

Psalm 66:18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. 

Isaiah 59:1-2 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2  but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. 

It seems clear from this that deliberate sin will rob us of our joy in believing, and of our assurance of salvation. It will cause us to feel that God is more distant from us than He used to be, and it will result in God no longer hearing our prayers. 

Sin is serious, and sin is vile. We should take these passages of Scriptures into account when we are tempted to gratify the cravings of our sinful nature by indulging willfully in sin. 

Note, though, that God's becoming less perceptible to us in reaction to our sin is a loving thing. See how it affected David's heart and what longing it produced in him to be restored to close communion with the Lord! In the case of church discipline, don't we follow a similar path? When a church member sins and remains unrepentant over it, they are to be put out of the church - distanced from all the privileges and blessings that belong to God's children. This is to be done in love, with the earnest desire to see the offender restored. While they are out of the church, they are to be treated as unbelievers and we are to seek to win them for Christ. 

This is what happened in the church at Corinth, which excommunicated a member in response to Paul's direction, and then saw that member restored:

2 Corinthians 7:8–13 For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. ⁹ As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. ¹⁰ For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. ¹¹ For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. ¹² So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. ¹³ Therefore we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.

If God's dealings with David are illustrative of how He deals with His children when they fall into sin (and our sin will certainly cause us to feel more distanced from God than we did before), if He behaves towards us in Christ as our heavenly Father and models perfect fatherhood for us, and if He teaches the members of His household on earth (the church) by word and by example to put some distance between themselves and an unrepentant sinner who was in their number, we may ask ourselves whether something similar shouldn't be appropriate where there is willful and unrepentant sin within an earthly family unit? Sin there will damage relationships, too. We need to be careful that we do not minimize sin in the way that we deal with it, or the offender may not come to learn how serious sin is, and what it does to relationships with God. At the same time, we need to operate (as God does) out of love and with much patience and grace, being careful not to crush the spirits of our children but to encourage them to seek God to be their own Father.

God's leaving us for a time in order to teach us about ourselves and our need of Him 

Finally, we need to note that there may be other reasons than willful and unrepentant sin that may cause us to feel more distant from God for a season. The Scriptures are full of cries from God's people who felt that God was far off and had unaccountably forgotten them:

Job 13:24 Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?

Job 23:3 Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat!

Psalm 10:1 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

Psalm 13:1–2 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? ² How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Psalm 44:20–24 If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, ²¹ would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart. ²² Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. ²³ Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever! ²⁴ Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?

Psalm 89:46–48 How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? ⁴⁷ Remember how short my time is! For what vanity you have created all the children of man! ⁴⁸ What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah

In Job's case, we are permitted to see behind the scenes. Job is outwardly blameless and has a solid faith in God. However, he does have an imperfect understanding of God and of his own righteousness before Him. Also, we see that Job is caught up in the spiritual struggle between God and Satan, and that through Job's refusal to curse God, He wins a victory over the Evil One. But Job is never made aware of all this and when at last God speaks to Job and grants him the hearing he longed for, God doesn't explain Himself. He has no need to. Job then realizes how vast God is, and how His ways are beyond finding out. So God demonstrates His power to Satan, and does a work to enhance Job's understanding of Who God is.

At such times, when we are sure we are not hanging on to any sin and putting our fleshly desires ahead of the desires of the Spirit within us, and yet God seems distant and we have no sense our prayers are being heard, what can we do? This is where faith operates. This is where we hold on to the promises of God. This is where we remind ourselves that God works all things together for good to those who love Him, who are called according to His purposes. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts but for those in Christ, all His thoughts and purposes are to do us good. This is where we rest, and continue to seek His face until He chooses again to draw near and to reveal Himself to us.

So there are times when God will seem distant. This may be because we have driven Him away through persisting in a path of known sin (of which we will surely be aware), or it may be because for His own good purposes He seems less near to us than He was before. In the first case, we need to heed this sense we have that He is missing from us. We need to repent and seek Him earnestly, and He will be found again by us. In the second case, we need to seek Him also, and cry out to Him to restore to us our sense of His smile upon us, and we will be blessed as we do so.

99 - Loss of our own lives

As we complete this overview on loss, we are again reminded of Adam and Eve, who are for us the father and mother of all our loss. We can see them after they ate the fruit, now uncomfortably aware of their guilt and their different standing before God. What do they do? Needing an effectual covering (a perfect righteousness) for their infinite shame that would turn aside the just wrath of God - a covering which they had no hope of providing for themselves, they nevertheless make the attempt. They stitch together a few fig leaves and make useless garments. In many ways, that action seems to be a metaphor for the history of mankind post-fall; we know we have lost something very special that we were made to enjoy (intimate, eternal, familial relationship with God, with all the liberty, riches, status, purpose, etc. that this entails) and we make futile attempts to compensate for the loss by fabricating our own replacements with useless things stitched together from what lies around us in this world.

We have one more loss to consider before we are done. It is the loss of our own life. This is where the rubber really hits the road in terms of loss, isn't it? If we lose our wealth, status, health and even loved ones in this world, we may be able to regain the first three and find others to be loved ones while we remain here. But our spiritual and physical death is of eternal consequence and there is nothing we can do to avoid them, or to make ourselves live forever. Furthermore (and we are all aware of this at some level) our physical death marks the end of our opportunity to experience the forgiveness that God made available through the death of Christ at the cross. If we haven't availed ourselves of this forgiveness when we die, then it is too late to obtain it, and we must face God in judgment still owing Him the debt that all our sins against Him have incurred. 

Hebrews 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,

The inevitable verdict without Christ will be that we are guilty. The inevitable (and appropriate) sentence will be an eternity in hell. That this may seem excessive shows that our sin causes us to underestimate the seriousness of sin - the magnitude of the offenses we have committed against God. There will be no parole, no reduction of the sentence for good behavior, no commutation by an earthly president. That is one reason why Paul calls death "the last enemy":

1 Corinthians 15:26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Death is final. It closes the window of time in which we may repent and cast ourselves on the mercy of God. So this is the greatest loss Adam and Eve brought upon themselves and us - the loss of spiritual and physical life - and it is because we exist on earth in a godless, living death that all the other losses still afflict us with no gospel mitigation if we reject Jesus as Savior.

Jesus speaks of a life lived for this world's meaningless rewards, and a death without Him as our Savior as losing (forfeiting) one's soul:

Matthew 16:24–27 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. ²⁶ For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? ²⁷ For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.

Death, then, is our ultimate loss. The permanent and irrevocable loss of our very selves, and of everything meaningful and valuable that we may possess through a restored relationship with God. In it's place, an eternity suffering the just punishment to pay for all our offences against God. Jesus speaks of hell as somewhat like being endlessly eaten alive by worms, or ceaselessly burned in searing flames that are never extinguished and from which there is no escape. It's very possible that some of these "worms" and some of these "flames" will be the eternal "What ifs" and "If onlys" that must plague everyone who is there. "What if I had paid attention when the gospel was preached and had asked God to forgive me?", "If only I hadn't stopped up my ears when my colleague spoke to me about Jesus, and hadn't mocked him and ridiculed him for believing things that I now realize are true."

How different it is for the one who has repented of their sins and trusted Jesus to save them! Jesus has taken the sting out of death for them:

1 Corinthians 15:54-57 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55  “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

The believer, rightly understanding what Christ has accomplished for them, is delivered from the fear of death and the slavery that comes with it:

Hebrews 2:14-15 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

This speaks to a different quality of life here and now, because the dark and foreboding storm clouds of death, that obscure the horizon when all we have after death is a fearful expectation of judgment are blown away in Christ. The perfect love of our God, which we come to know through Christ, drives out fear of judgment and therefore fear of death:

1 John 4:16-18 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

Death has become a portal to every child of God, through which they enter into the full enjoyment of God, and of all the rich blessings of the inheritance that He has already prepared for us and that is waiting to be revealed on the Last Day.

For this reason, and in a way that is completely opposite to our usual thinking about death, it is actually described as a gift for the believer, in the same way that life is a gift and the Apostles who gave us the Word of God are a gift:

1 Corinthians 3:21-23 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

We are also told that God is not indifferent as His children pass through this portal. On the contrary, their death is something very precious to Him:

Psalm 116:15  Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. 

We see an indication of this at the stoning of Stephen. We know that after His ascension into heaven, Jesus sat down at the right hand of God. Yet, as the moment of his passing into glory arrives, Stephen is given eyes to see something very remarkable:

Acts 7:55-56 But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

It seems Jesus stood up at the moment of Stephen's death. He is active, He is engaged, He is present to Stephen in a way that I think acknowledges the preciousness to God of the death of every child, since they are welcomed into glory and take their place as a part of the inheritance that the Father promised to Jesus in return for His redemptive work. It was for the joy set before Him that Jesus endured the cross, and that joy includes having His blood-bought children with Him in heaven and seeing His glory.

Of course, in the age to come, God's children will be in full possession of eternal life (knowing God and Jesus, Whom He sent) all the blessings of wealth, status, purpose and glory that this entails. They will see Jesus face to face and be made like Him. They will know more blessings than Adam lost through the fall, and they will be incapable of losing them again!

This is incomparable gain! In contrast with our existence this side of glory, Paul calls this "truly life", for which all we do as believers in this world should lay a good foundation:

1 Timothy 6:18–19 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, ¹⁹ thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. 

It is this transformed understanding of death and completely different relationship with it that enables believers to welcome it rather than run from it. As we read the account of Stephen's death, and of the martyrdom of God's children down through the years, and see how other holy men and women have closed out the earthly phase of their lives, we often see the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit on display. We see the hope of glory shining brightly. We understand Paul more clearly in his desire to leave this world and experience the ultimate "gain" of God's loved ones, but his willingness to remain here in service to God and the church until he is called home:

Philippians 1:18-26 Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. 

But we need to guard against the wiles of the Evil One here. When believers give in to fears and misgivings about death, he will be quick to accuse us, and to sow in our minds the thought that we cannot be true believers if these fears still surface from time to time. In John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress", he records the passing of Christian and Hopeful across the river (death) before they enter the celestial city. Hopeful finds the crossing relatively easy but Christian is beset with doubts and fears:

Then they addressed themselves to the water, and entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head; all his waves go over me. Selah.

Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my brother: I feel the bottom, and it is good. Then said Christian, Ah! my friend, the sorrows of death have compassed me about, I shall not see the land that flows with milk and honey. And with that a great darkness and horror fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him. Also here he in a great measure lost his senses, so that he could neither remember nor orderly talk of any of those sweet refreshments that he had met with in the way of his pilgrimage. But all the words that he spoke still tended to discover that he had horror of mind, and heart-fears that he should die in that river, and never obtain entrance in at the gate. Here also, as they that stood by perceived, he was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had committed, both since and before he began to be a pilgrim. It was also observed that he was troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits; for ever and anon he would intimate so much by words.

Hopeful therefore here had much ado to keep his brother’s head above water; yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then, ere a while, he would rise up again half dead. Hopeful did also endeavor to comfort him, saying, Brother, I see the gate, and men standing by to receive us; but Christian would answer, It is you, it is you they wait for; for you have been hopeful ever since I knew you. And so have you, said he to Christian. Ah, brother, (said he,) surely if I was right he would now arise to help me; but for my sins he hath brought me into the snare, and hath left me. Then said Hopeful, My brother, you have quite forgot the text where it is said of the wicked, “There are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm; they are not troubled as other men, neither are they plagued like other men.” Psa. 73:4, 5. These troubles and distresses that you go through in these waters, are no sign that God hath forsaken you; but are sent to try you, whether you will call to mind that which heretofore you have received of his goodness, and live upon him in your distresses.

Then I saw in my dream, that Christian was in a muse a while. To whom also Hopeful added these words, Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole. And with that Christian brake out with a loud voice, Oh, I see him again; and he tells me, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.” Isa. 43:2. Then they both took courage, and the enemy was after that as still as a stone, until they were gone over. Christian, therefore, presently found ground to stand upon, and so it followed that the rest of the river was but shallow. Thus they got over. 

Some important points for every believer are noted here. First, some believers have an easier passage through death than others. Second, God doesn't leave any of His children to sink or to be lost in darkness. Rather, He sends grace and help to them in their time of need (as Hopeful ministered grace to Christian here). Third, and most importantly, our Savior will lose none of those for whom He shed His blood on the cross. All will infallibly be brought home to Him. Christian was given grace to see Christ and to draw strength from Him to complete his passage into glory.

So while believers may not (and should not) fear death in the same way unbelievers do (and should) it is part of their warfare here to battle against doubts and fears that would rob them of the assurance they may know that death has no sting for them but is in fact a wonderful gift. And God graciously provides them with armor, with counsel and with comfort to be more than conquerors, safely arriving in heaven at last.

We could spend many more meditations thinking about the subject of loss. The survey we have undertaken in the last few posts, though, should convince us that we will always find that the gospel mitigates the pain of loss for the believer in this world and turns that loss into abundant gain in heaven. We will always come away with the understanding that it is utter foolishness to try to replace the good things we enjoyed before the fall but lost in that calamity with inadequate, worldly substitutes, sinking all our hopes for meaning, purpose and fulfillment into them and giving them the place in our lives which should belong to God and to Him alone.

98 - Loss of loved ones, part 2

Last time, we saw that having fallen in the Garden, mankind has tried to make up for the loss of the sense of purpose and meaning that he gained from the special relationship that he had with God by forming ties with other men and women. But good though those are meant to be, even the closest bonds that we can form with other human beings cannot fully restore meaning to our lives where God remains absent. We reflected that this makes the death of one on whom we depend for purpose especially painful for those of us who reject God. This hurt is exacerbated for those who have no hope of heaven and for whom therefore the passing of loved ones is accompanied by a profound hopelessness.

This will be a much briefer meditation than the previous one. We simply want to observe that there are circumstances in this world where, even if their body is still alive, we can in fact lose loved ones in a very real sense. Degenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's and dementia, as well as mental illness or treatments administered to control medical conditions can bring about fundamental changes in the personae of the individuals concerned. In all these situations, the person that we used to know may no longer be present to us - they may be "lost" - and then the relationship we used to enjoy with them is no longer possible.

Though we may not recognize it as such, it is entirely possible in such circumstances to go through a period of grieving over the loss of the loved one, even though they are still bodily present on earth. 

Having established this possibility, we can now re-read the previous meditation, understanding the loss of the loved one as including these situations, in addition to their death. It is still more painful to the one who leaned on the relationship for all their purpose and meaning in the world than it will be for the believer who has God in their lives as the primary focus of their existence. The hope of the gospel will still give the believer a comfort (where the condition afflicts one who clearly knew Christ) that the unbeliever will not know. This hope includes the fact that the sick believer will be restored, and will rise to eternal life in Christ. They will be given a new, whole body and mind at the resurrection. 

In heaven, we will clearly see what we often have to cling to in this world by faith; that all the trials and afflictions we experience directly or indirectly in this life are not intended for our harm but to enable us to display the power and the glory of God while on earth, and to fit us more fully for our heavenly dwelling. They are sent into our lives not out of caprice or malice, but in infinite love and with infinite wisdom that means they most certainly will accomplish their good purpose in us, through us and for us.

What are you looking to to fill that ache and that emptiness in your soul, reader? Now that you know why it isn't working and that it never can, why not turn from all those things (which are nothing more nor less than false gods) and ask the One True God to come into your life, to forgive you for shutting Him out and for all the other ways you have offended Him, and to be your everything - your meaning, your purpose, your eternal life? Because of what Jesus did on the cross, there is a guaranteed welcome from God for all who will forsake their sin and trust Him alone to save them!

97 - Loss of loved ones, Part 1

This was always going to be the hardest topic in this series to write about. Even the mention of losing someone we love touches a nerve for us. Few of us can have escaped the experience, regardless of how old we are. And it can occur in more than one way, something which few of us reckon on but is nevertheless true. This post will deal with the more obvious way we lose loved ones - when they pass out of this life and into eternity. But those who have ever cared for or loved sufferers from Alzheimer's disease, from certain accidents or conditions or medical treatments that result in a fundamental change of the individual's personality will understand that this, too, is a way in which we lose loved ones. The body remains but the person we knew and loved has gone. We'll look more at that circumstance in the next post.

It's hard enough when those we love move further away geographically - when we can't be in contact with them as easily or as often as we once were. But at least we know they are still here "with us" in a real sense. We can video chat, pick up a phone, write an email or even put pen to paper. The knowledge that we can do these things is comforting, even if we follow through all too seldom. But these other losses we are talking about here are far more wrenching and far-reaching to deal with. Let's consider first, then, the subject of losing loved ones through their death.

Death is irrevocable. Death is irreversible. Death, we know instinctively, is wrong. And while we may be able to push back the more personal implications into the recesses of our minds quite successfully for lengthy periods (despite the almost daily headlines about celebrities or others who have died) the death of a loved one brings the reality and the horror home to us with an inescapable force. Somehow, the passing of a loved one often shocks us and even surprises us. Up to that point, we intellectually understood that it might happen, while simultaneously, at a deeper level, rejecting its possibility. Somehow, no matter what age a loved one is when they die, it feels like we (and they) have been robbed of a few extra years of their life. 

In this whole series, we  have traced "loss" back to the Garden of Eden and seen how the choices Adam and Eve made introduced the concept of loss into a creation which knew nothing of it. Then we have looked at what loss is like for an unbeliever, how the Gospel mitigates that loss for God's children on earth, and how that loss is turned to gain in heaven. We'll do the same for this subject. As an aside, we are never nearer the heart of the gospel than when we consider what Christ has done in regard to what Scripture calls "the Last Enemy" (death) through His life, His own death on the cross and His resurrection.

There are no plainer words in which God could have spelled out to Adam and Eve what would surely happen to them if they disobeyed Him and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:

Genesis 2:15–17 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Satan deceived Eve into believing that God had been lying to them, and she persuaded Adam so that they both ate. Up to the moment that the determination to eat the fruit was firmly resolved in their minds and hearts, Adam and Eve were not subject to death themselves. They were sinless possessors of life from God with nothing in them that could have interrupted their enjoyment of Him for all eternity. But most likely before they even bit into the fruit, at the instant they set their hearts in rebellion against God, the reign of death over Adam and Eve and all their children was ushered in. That's right. Adam's action sealed the fate of all his descendants. You should hear the gavel crashing down on the sounding block, and the verdict of "guilty" being ratified for all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve at that moment in the garden. Since Adam represented us in his attempt to overthrow the reign of God in his life, we are born with the same aversion to God's rule that he had. Since the just punishment for the sin of Adam and Eve was death, and we are guilty of the same sin, death reigns over us too as the righteous consequence for our sin against God.

We have said it before but must repeat it here. The death of Adam and Eve was comprehensive. On the day of their offence, just as He promised, God carried out the most significant part of their sentence and cut them off from His presence - they died spiritually. But also beginning at that time, the decay and degradation of their bodies that would result in their physical deaths was set in motion. So catastrophic was the act of rebellion by our parents that the whole universe came under bondage to decay as a result.

From this review, we should understand why we all know at some level that death is wrong, and that it should have no place in the creation of the God Who has life in Himself. It never belonged here. It is a monstrous blemish on God's once "very good" universe. 

The account of the fall takes very few words on the pages of Scripture, but its consequences and implications for man, and their complete reversal by God, take the whole of the rest of the Bible to expound.

The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, endowed with more wisdom and wealth than anyone else, devoted himself, his talents and his resources to discover (in the words of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything." It was a momentous task, and he left no stone unturned in his zeal. When he reached the end of his research, though, his conclusion was anticlimactic (even more so than "42"): he found that there is no answer to these things for the person who refuses to acknowledge God and to live for Him. Life is meaningless. It has no purpose. It is nothing more than atoms and molecules moving around in random ways and achieving nothing of lasting significance.

So those who do not come to know God in this world have never truly been alive. Their bodies live and they enjoy many good things from God but all the while they are cut off from Him and therefore they are like Adam and Eve when first evicted from Eden - spiritually dead. What the writer of Ecclesiastes really found out is that life without knowing the God we were made to enjoy is a living death.

And that is why Jesus came - to restore lost meaning and purpose to His chosen ones, by breathing new life into them and reconciling them to God. The sinless Son of God lived a sinless life in this sinful world. He earned for His people a spotless righteousness that would become theirs upon them placing their faith in Him. Then He died an excruciating death on the cross, satisfying the demands of God's law concerning the sins they committed. With His righteousness credited to them, and their debt to the law fully canceled, Jesus broke the power of death over them. He showed this in His resurrection. It was impossible, says Peter, for death to keep its hold on Him:

Acts 2:24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

He hushed the law's loud thunder! The debt of our sin was fully paid by Jesus and there was nothing in heaven or earth or below the earth that could keep Him dead! When we trust Him to save us from our sins, we become united with Him and our debt is canceled too. Therefore, there is nothing that can keep us in the grave either - we must rise to new life! He is the "Death of Death, and Hell's Destruction", as one hymn gloriously puts it!

Why is death so very painful for unbelievers?

We have seen that we attempt in this world to replace the good things we had in Eden but lost in the fall with man-made knock-offs. Faced with having no relationship with God to give us meaning, what do we do? We look for meaning elsewhere - in status, wealth etc., and not least in relationships with others (which are therefore fundamentally self-centered) We are driven to fill our overwhelming need for meaning and purpose. So when a loved one dies, who has played a critical, central role in supplying meaning to our lives - the role that God should have and that only He can fully satisfy - we are undone. One of the first questions to enter our minds when we are bereaved is often "what about me? - what will become of me?" Roughly translated, I think it means, "where will I find the meaning that I need and that this loved one supplied to me?" What can now fill that hole? The pain is all the greater since there is a total absence of certain future hope in most worldly philosophies. The loved one is gone forever.

How is the pain of death mitigated for believers?

The situation is very different for the believer. His/her relationship with God has been restored. The Lord more and more fully occupies His rightful place in their lives (as they are made more and more like Jesus). They derive their meaning and their purpose in Him and are not selfishly looking at relationships with loved ones to partly or completely perform that function. That is by no means to say that our relationships with loved ones are now unimportant - which is not at all the case. But it is to say that they are pursued with different motives (of selflessness) and occupy a proper place in our lives relative to our relationship with the Lord. Furthermore, if the loved one who dies is a believer, we who remain can know with absolute certainty that in a few short years we will be re-united with them in heaven.

How is death here turned to gain in glory for God's children?

And it is in heaven where we will fully understand the wonder of what Jesus did on the cross, and how it is that even the last enemy, death, is turned into gain for us! There, we will see Him as He is. There, we will be made like Him. There, we will be reunited with all those who have trusted Him to save them from their sin. There, everything will be made new. There, there will be no more mourning or weeping, no more pain or sorrow. There, we will realize with a new clarity that all our purpose and meaning is ultimately found in Him, even when it comes though the precious gifts He keeps on giving us, such as those we love. And nothing will ever interrupt the joy and the fullness of that place and that experience, because it focuses on and flows from the One Who lives forever and saves to the uttermost! This is gain indeed! And for this reason, Scripture speaks of death as a portal to future glory, and even as a gracious gift that God has given us!

96 - Freedom, Oh Freedom - That's Just Some People Talking

"FREEDOM!" is the iconic shout of William Wallace (played by Mel Gibson) in the movie, Braveheart.

It's not hard to work out that freedom is something most if not all people cherish and aspire to. Just take a look at the official and unofficial mottos that different countries around the world have adopted:

• Argentina: In Union and Liberty
• Columbia: Freedom and order
• Dominican Republic: God, Fatherland, Liberty
• Ecuador: God, homeland and liberty
• El Salvador: God, Union, Liberty
• France: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 
• Ghana: Freedom and Justice
• Greece:  Freedom or Death
• Hungary: With the help of God for Homeland and Freedom
• Latvia: Fatherland and Freedom
• Liberia: The love of liberty brought us here
• Federated States of Micronesia:  Peace, Unity, Liberty
• Lithuania: Freedom, Unity, Prosperity
• Malawi: Unity and Freedom
• Namibia: Unity, liberty, justice
• San Marino: Liberty
• Sierra Leone: Unity, freedom, justice
• South Sudan: Justice, Liberty, Prosperity
• Syria: Unity, Freedom, Socialism
• Tanzania: Freedom and Unity
• Togo: Work, liberty, homeland
• Tunisia: Freedom, Order and Justice
• Uruguay: Liberty or Death
• Zimbabwe: Unity, Freedom, Work

Finally, the pledge of allegiance in the United States contains these words: "...one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

We believe that it's our inalienable right and ability to choose to do whatever we want. We resist those who are in authority over us, just as Adam and Eve did before us. So we devote time, effort and energy to achieving and maintaining a state of being which we regard as "Liberty". Of course, freedom as a concept is quite flexible, so that it suits any number of circumstances in which we feel we are being denied something we deserve. So, for example, there is freedom from oppression, freedom from slavery, freedom from discrimination, freedom from illness, freedom from government interference and so on, even through to freedom from food additives and pesticides.

Reflecting on all this, there seem to be two clear observations. First, freedom is almost universally seen as a good thing that we all deserve. Second, one way or another, it is something that few of us feel that we possess.

When we first began to consider this topic, we reviewed the fact that Adam and Eve lost many things when they rebelled against God and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Freedom was among them. Whereas before, they were free to obey God and to choose to please Him in their lives, the sin in their hearts had now enslaved them. They could no longer do anything that was free from sin and therefore they couldn't please God any more. 

The continuing, stark truth of the situation is that since the fall, everyone in this world has no spiritual freedom, resulting from the choices Adam and Eve made when they fell. This is what God tells us in the Bible:

Romans 6:15-23 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

It seems to be a constant theme underlying our actions since the fall that we try to replace the precious things that we lost then with man-made substitutes that don't work. Having lost our eternal life, we pursue ways to extend our lives indefinitely. Having lost an intimate relationship with the One True God, we fill His rightful place in our lives with gods made in our own image. So it seems that a subconscious sense of our loss of freedom drives us to look for all kinds of avenues to synthetic freedoms which don't compare with what we had in the garden, and so never deliver on the warm fuzzy feeling that the "freedom concept" gives us.

The irony is that we are all so blinded by sin that we think we are free now or can somehow achieve true freedom by our own efforts. We can't.

When Jesus came into the world, He proclaimed the truth, and indicated that He Himself (Who is the Truth) was able to set people free from their bondage to sin:

John 8:31-36 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 

We have already seen that Jesus did this by destroying the power of sin in the lives of His people. Scripture says that the power of sin is the law, but Jesus kept the law for His people and received the penalty for their law-breaking on the cross. So for them, sin cannot be their master any longer, because the law no longer empowers it. They are truly free, in a way that is better than any worldly concept of freedom (which always means having no-one to tell us what to do). For the believer, freedom means being free to obey God's commands from the heart and to become a bondslave to the best, most gracious, kind and loving master there is. Paul expresses this transformation in the following words:

1 Corinthians 7:22 For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. 

Again, Jesus turns the thinking of this world on its head. To be truly free means being a bondslave of the Lord, but being free as the world thinks of freedom is remaining a slave to sin and continuing as a child of Satan. 

How does the gospel mitigate a loss of freedom in this world?

For those who do not know Christ, the inevitable losses of freedom they experience in this world often have a significant and even devastating result. They resent that they have been denied something they regard as their right, especially when they see those they regard as less worthy enjoying the very same thing. Bitterness, anger, hatred, self-pity can engulf them. 

Such losses will not be easy for believers either, but the gospel should make them much more tolerable for several reasons.

• They have a better understanding of what freedom actually is. They know that they were born slaves and that Jesus has set them free from sin. 
• They know that nothing in this world will ever satisfy the deepest needs of their souls. Therefore they hold more loosely to worldly concepts of freedom. 
• They know that God has perfectly planned their circumstances in this world with their very best in mind. So a deprivation can be received as a gracious providence that results in thanksgiving and not bitterness.
• They know that this world will soon give way for them to an eternal paradise where they will fully  experience freedom as God intended it. A temporary loss of the world's synthetic liberties is much more manageable seen in this light.

This, in part, explains how Paul and Silas, still bleeding from being beaten and clapped in the stocks in a pitch-dark dungeon (because they had preached the gospel in Philippi), broke into songs of praise to God at midnight:

Acts 16:25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them,

How is a loss of freedom in this world turned into gain for the believer in the world to come?

God's children will all experience a gracious super-abundance in heaven. All the deprivations they experienced in this world will seem trivial at that point, except in one very important sense. God's children will understand very clearly that everything that happened to them in this world equipped them to enjoy God and His heaven to the uttermost. All their losses of "freedom" here will therefore contribute to the fullness of glory and of joy they will know there!