September 4, 2005

The Contours of a Christlike God

2 Corinthians 1:3-10

Introduction

I want to tell you the story of Kathleen Norris, author of several best-selling books including The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace: the Vocabulary of Faith. Her first, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, tells the story of a woman raised on the plains of North Dakota who, after high school not only fled the confines of a small town, but what she called “the hard-edged fundamentalism” of her paternal grandmother Norris, a rural Methodist preacher’s wife, which created in her mind some horrible images of God. The book also chronicles Kathleen’s return to the town she was raised in nearly 20 years later to search for her geographical and spiritual roots.

In a well-meaning but misguided attempt to compel Kathleen to ‘accept Jesus’ when she was a little girl, her paternal grandmother Norris would tell her about Jesus’ second coming and the terrible things that would follow for those who ‘did not know the Lord.’ Scary images of the end of the world, presided over by a Monster God, were implanted in her impressionable mind and would haunt her dreams for years to come. In one reoccurring dream, she would see herself lying on a beach, unable to move as a giant whale swam toward her, intent upon raping, crushing, and consuming her. “I suspect,” she confides, “that this whale was my true image of God, a legacy of my childhood.”

Kathleen speaks of her spiritual heritage through her grandmother Norris as a “hard religion” that nearly destroyed her capacity to trust. Consequently, she admits to throwing herself into the pursuit of “reason, learning, artistic creativity, and sexual liberation.” Kathleen ventures that “trust is something abused children lack, and children raised with a Monster God inside them have a hard time regaining it.”

“Grandmother Norris was nothing if not biblical,” Kathleen recalls. “For most of her life she would ask of anyone she met: ‘Are you saved?’”

“It’s this hard religion,” she confides, “adding fuel to an all-American mix of incest, rape, madness, and suicide that nearly destroyed an entire generation in my family.” One of her aunts suffered terribly and one was lost. Kathleen never met her because she died the year Kathleen was born. Mary was a bright and good girl. “The church was music to her” and she lived to sing in church choirs. Mary’s buoyantly open personality and loving heart made her vulnerable. She became pregnant out of wedlock. The combination of shame (What—another Methodist preacher’s daughter gone bad?), schizophrenia, and postpartum despair drained her lively spirit of its music. A few days after she delivered her baby, she jumped out of a window at a state mental hospital. “Suicides have a way of haunting the next generation,” Kathleen observes. “I believe I became a writer in order to tell her story and possibly redeem it.”

It wasn’t until her adult years that she began to learn the source of her grandmother’s hard-edged fundamentalism. She married after her husband’s conversion at a revival meeting. He was a divorced man whose wife had abandoned him and their two small children. While her revered older sister became a medical missionary, she settled for becoming the wife of a Plains pastor who served seventeen churches in 32 years. She also raised seven children.

Their first child was born with rickets. Another died of meningitis. She prayed for another boy and promised the Lord that she would rear him to become a minister. That son—her last child—was born when she was in her forties. He tried and failed to live out her plans for him.

Most bitter of all was that early in their marriage, Kathleen’s grandfather rejected his wife’s affection in such a way that it was still fresh in her memory sixty years later. Long after he was dead she could calmly say, “You know, of course, he never loved me.”

That is the tragic flaw of a religious orthodoxy so straight and true that its precepts could be “engraved in letters on stone” and yet so loveless it becomes a “ministry of condemnation” that squeezes the life and spontaneity out of the soul (2 Corinthians 3:6-9).

A teacher looked down on a first grader who was working furiously with his color crayons. “What are you drawing?” she asked.

“I’m drawing a picture of God.”

“But how can you? After all, nobody has ever seen God. Nobody knows what He looks like.”

Replied the little fellow, “After I’m done, they’ll know!”

Paul, the consummate artist, takes in one hand a pallet and in the other a brush, and with sweeping, broad strokes, paints for us a portrait of God such as human eyes have never before beheld. It is a portrait of God as revealed in the face of Jesus. I would like for us to stand awhile, in amazement, at the beautiful face of God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. (Read)

Right off the top, Paul brings us good news—incredible, revolutionary, historic good news—about God. God has not remained hidden from us. He has not left us to wander about in the dark concerning who He is. He has made himself known in Jesus of Nazareth. Who is God? Paul’s answer is, “God is the Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” God is the kind of father who could have a son like Jesus! Or, to put it another way, God is a Christlike God! When we begin to examine what that means, it blows us right out of the water. What Paul has to say about the beautiful face of God revealed in Jesus sounds almost too good to be true. Let’s look at it.

I. God Does Not Deal with Us According to Justice, but According to Mercy.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, of compassion…” (1:3).

Father of mercies? That’s not how I have grown up to perceive God. For me it has been more the “Father of Terror” than the “Father of Mercies.” Like many of you, I was raised in a religious environment where the emphasis has centered on God’s Holiness—that awesome and terrible Holiness—from which heaven and earth flees. Because God is holy, He cannot abide sin. He hates sin. He must destroy sin and punish the sinner. God, in His absolute perfection, is not only the maker of laws beyond number—who can know much less abide by them all?—but He is also the enforcer, the cosmic cop, prosecutor, the judge, the jury, and executioner all rolled up in one.

Several years ago I drove down to spend a couple of days with my father in Sacramento. I was driving a desolate stretch of road in the Nevada desert that time had passed by. I was caught up in a spirit of worship, as Christian music wafting from my stereo lifted me to heavenly places in Christ Jesus, when I noticed in the distance a car coming at me with what looked like skis on top. Too late I recognized them as, not skis, but ominous lights. I glanced at the speedometer. A cold chill enveloped me from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet. I began to sweat profusely. Sure enough, I could see the highway patrol officer stand his car right on its head braking as he went by. I watched him do a U-turn in my rearview mirror. I could see the gravel fly as he whipped around and accelerated to catch up with me. He really didn’t need to do that because by then I was driving 13 miles an hour. I thought, “Surely, if I drive under the speed limit awhile, that will compensate for the little bit I drove over. He will surely average it out.” But, no. He switched on those red and blue lights, which flashed hellishly. For added effect he tapped his siren, just enough to send another wave of panic rolling over me like a loaded cement truck. And as he wrote me up, it simply never occurred to me to sing, “Cops are so good.”

Now, if I feel absolutely intimidated in the presence of a police officer who caught me in an infraction which ended up costing me a trivial $65.00, how much more have I felt absolutely exposed, naked, and overwhelmed in the presence of a God who has His radar fixed on me day and night—not only for actual transgressions but the thoughts and intents of my heart—and who dangles me over the pit of an eternal hell! Then you want me to sing, “God is so good?” With honey butter and maple syrup on it?

No wonder people by the billions have fled—like Adam in the garden—in terror from the heavy footfall of an angry God approaching. I can understand why people avoid church like the plague. Who wants to stand before a God whom—no matter how hard you try—you cannot possibly please, and who is constantly saying to you, “That’s not quite good enough!” No wonder so many who have struggled so hard for so long to make it as spiritual Christians, finally throw up their hands and turn their backs upon God and the Church. They simply cannot live under the intolerable pressure of having to measure up all the time.

Oh, Good News, my friend: the God revealed in the beautiful face of Jesus is not only holy but He is love! In holiness He deals with sin according to justice, but in love He deals with sinners according to mercy. Paul says that God is the “Father of all Mercies!” Perhaps Paul had in mind the Ark of the Covenant, which was the centerpiece of furniture in the Old Testament tabernacle holy of holies. The top of the Ark represented the dwelling place of God with His people. Here are God’s instructions to Moses when he built the Ark:

“And you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold . . . and you shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony which I shall give to you. And there I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak to you . . .” (Exodus 25:17, 21-22).

Where does heaven touch earth? At the judgment bar? No, but

At the mercy seat!
Where does divinity intersect humanity?
At the mercy seat!
Where does a holy God meet unholy humanity?
At the mercy seat!

Hal Perkins, current pastor of the Grandview, Washington Church of the Nazarene, tells about being raised in a small church where there was no junior church, so the kids all had to sit through long services trying to entertain themselves. Invariably, he would do something that would bring upon his young head the wrath of his mom. In addition to the pinches administered during church, there would be frequent spankings after church for misbehaving. On his ninth birthday he had been given a sack of marbles. He snuck them into church in his pocket. During the most boring part of the sermon he fished them out and untied the top. You remember those fishnet-like bags marbles came in? Well, once the top popped open, the net simply collapsed in his hand and the marbles bounced with a mighty bounce on the wooden pew, and bounced off onto the wooden floor which was sloped in that sanctuary, and of course rolled bouncing and banging into pews all the way to the wooden altar, off of which they bounced and rolled back again and again, for what seemed to be about two hours longer than eternity to one absolutely panicked little nine-year-old. Of course, the preacher stopped preaching. Of course, not only the preacher but every head in the church turned to stare at the culprit, scrunching down trying so hard to become instantly invisible.

That morning his dad happened to be sitting between him and his mom, so she couldn’t get at him immediately. But then his dad did a wonderful thing. Without ever taking his eyes off the preacher, he put his right arm out and around his son and gently patted him on the shoulder, as if nothing had happened. After church he intervened and would not let Hal’s mom administer an extraordinarily severe beating, with the explanation, “Boys will be boys.” And then Hal said, “It was at that moment I learned the meaning of grace.”

God does not deal with us according to justice but according to mercy. I can be comfortable in the presence of a God like Hal’s father. I can be comfortable in the presence of a God like Jesus’ father. I think I can almost love a God like that, the God who accepts me not on the basis of who I am but on who He is! The God who calls me into His fellowship not because of what I have done but because of what He has done for me in Christ! “For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourself: not by works lest any man should boast.” God does not deal with us according to justice but according to mercy! II. God Does Not Afflict Us, but Comforts Us!

Paul does not tell us what happened to him in Asia in v. 8, but whatever it was constituted an extremity of spiritual, mental, and emotional suffering that took him right to the edge. He uses the word “affliction” four times in these few verses. Affliction in the Greek means torment, torture, unbearable pressure, pain. Can you identify?

In a praiseworthy but nevertheless mistaken desire to glorify God, there have been multitudes of Christians—past and present—who have affirmed that God causes affliction!

The great reformation theologian, John Calvin said, “There is nothing that ever comes into our lives, be it good or evil, pain or pleasure, life or death, blessing or cursing, sickness or health, but that it comes directly from the hand of the sovereign omnipotent God.” And so saith such leading luminaries as Charles Swindoll. And Jerry Falwell. And John MacArthur. And four out of five books offered in your local Christian bookstore. Calvin’s theology, which dominates the Evangelical Christian world of thought, can be summarized quite simply: God is absolutely sovereign. He is totally in control. Nothing can or does happen apart from His divine decree. Therefore everything that occurs happens because God wills it according to His own inscrutable purposes. When bad things happen to us we can comfort ourselves in the fact that He is bringing these disasters upon us for our own good. After all, does not the Bible say, “Whom the Lord loves he chastens?”

Well, let’s see how that looks in practice. My brother spent many years as a hospital chaplain. He sent me a letter right after he had two experiences in the hospital that reflect exactly this understanding of God. And I quote:

A woman was in the intensive care and later transferred to the coronary care, in her mid-forties. Her minister came into the ICU and said, “What are you doing here?” She responded, “They say I’ve had a heart attack.” To which he replied, “Well, good enough for you! Now maybe God can get through to you!”

Yesterday, I heard about a woman having a mastectomy. She was young and struggling with many dynamics relating to surgery and possible malignancy. The pastor talked with her husband while she was in surgery and suggested that since she was into jogging and giving so much attention to her body, now God was trying to get her attention through this operation and change her priorities. She was a SS teacher and very active in the church.

A student in one of my theology classes—a pastor’s daughter—wrote this as part of an essay she chose to write on the topic of hell: “I believe that God uses hell as His main threat of punishment, but I believe He also punishes on earth as well. For instance, I know a strong Christian couple who had a baby just a few months old. The husband backslid, and the baby was taken from them in crib-death. Can one not say that this is a form of divine punishment? Here is another situation. I know a young Christian girl who prayed desperately for her out-of-town boyfriend to come and see her. She prayed only for her own satisfaction and not for the Lord’s will. On his way to see her, he had an accident and was killed. Is this not also a form of divine punishment?”

Now let me ask you: if God is the one who smashes us up in car wrecks, afflicts us with arthritis, cancers, heart attacks, bankrupts our business, destroys our marriages, and kills babies in their cribs—if God does all these things, then I ask, who needs a Satan? Such a God would be more demonic than any devil you could ever conjure up in a thousand years, simply because He masquerades as a God of love. Such a God could never be our deliverer! Help us! He is the One from whom we need to be delivered!

The God and Father of Jesus Christ is not a child abuser. God does not afflict us. He doesn’t need to: sin, our fallen world, evil people, and our own folly does a very nice job of afflicting us all by itself, thank you! God doesn’t have to bring disasters upon our heads. Life under the shadow of sin’s curse beats up on us overtime.

Here is the incredibly good news. God does not afflict but comforts us in all our affliction, “He is the Father of Mercies and the God of all comfort!” (v. 3). Ten times in five verses Paul uses the word “comfort.” In the Greek it is paracletos, the same word used to describe the Holy Spirit, who is our comforter, our helper, our enabler, our counselor, our advocate. When we check out the etymology of the English word ‘comfort’, we discover that it is a compound of two Latin words: com which means ‘with, or along side of,’ and fortis which means ‘fortress.’ God is with us as a strong and mighty fortress, to support us when we are beaten up by life.

And that is precisely the nature and character of God we see refracted in the face of Jesus! It is Calvary love! The face of God we see in Christ has tears running down His cheeks! The glory of God we see in the face of Jesus is not that of a tormenter, a torturer, a doer of evil that good may come, but rather the face of a comforter, an encourager, one who suffers not only for us but with us! The comfort of God is that God comforts us in all our affliction so that we in turn may comfort one another! (v. 4).

A little girl came home from next door, where her little friend had died of leukemia just a couple of weeks before. Her father asked, “What were you doing next door?”

“I was comforting Mary’s mother.”

“And how did you do that?” inquired her father?

“I crawled up on her lap,” she responded, “and let Mary’s mom hug me, and I cried with her.”

That is the face of our God as it is revealed in Jesus! Jesus hugs us! Jesus weeps with us! Jesus is touched with the feelings of our infirmities. That is how we comfort one another: by hugging them, or letting them hug us, and by weeping with them; not by giving them a bunch of mindless silly answers, or suggesting that God is doing this to them for some noble purpose!

The third great dimension of the glory of God in the face of Jesus is that…

III. Our God Is Not a Killer, but the One Who Raises the Dead!

One of the deepest and most pervasive misconceptions about God was put into words so long ago by Job. On that terrible day when he lost his animals, his assets, his wealth, and all ten of his children, we read where he bowed low to the earth and worshiped God by saying, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Blessed be the name of the Lord!” Translated that means, God is the creator and the executer as well! From his hand come both life and death! God the cosmic killer. Somehow, that has entered into the mainstream of religious consciousness as if it were the last word about God.

Since this is so pervasive among all peoples, Muslim and Jewish, Christian and pagan, Evangelicals and Nazarenes, I think we need to assess critically and soberly what this does to our concept of God. Let me illustrate.

Elie Wiesel, Jewish author who won the Nobel Peace Prize three years ago, was the only one of his extended family to survive Auschwitz. His father was a Jewish Rabbi. When he was 16, he and his whole family were swept up in the Nazi dragnet and hauled off to Auschwitz in cattle cars, as yet unaware of the fate that lay ahead for them. The able-bodied men were separated from the women and children and aged, and made to go single-file into a camp compound. I’ll let him tell the story as he experienced it.

Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load—little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it—saw it with my own eyes . . . those children in the flames. (Is it surprising that I could not sleep after that? Sleep had fled from my eyes.) So this was where we were going. A little farther on was another and larger ditch for adults. I pinched my face. Was I still alive? Was I awake? I could not believe it. How could it be possible for them to burn people, children, and for the world to keep silent?

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget those things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

Now let me ask you: can you envision Jesus at the wheel of that truck, backing it up to the fiery pit, pulling the lever that lifts up the bed, and dumps its screaming, live babies and children into the flames? If God is like Jesus, can we ever charge Him with crib death, and accidents, and cancers, and heart attacks, and the inexorable decay in our bodies that eventually shuts down all systems? If that is what God is like, with Elie Wiesel and millions of others, I too turn away from such a God in horror!

Beloved, let me say this as strongly and as clearly as I can! The God who is revealed to us in Jesus is not a killer! When we go back to the very beginning, the creation of the heavens and earth, one thing is missing: death. It was never a part of God’s gracious intention for His creation! When we go to the other end of the Bible and see the new heavens and the new earth coming down out of heaven, one thing you will not find there, according to the book of Revelation. There is no death! God never was, is not now, and never can be a killer. The Bible is crystal clear about where death comes from. Paul says, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned . . . For the wages of sin is death.”

Ah, but here is the good news, even after sin has run it course and paid its wages of death, God has the last word. And what is it? Paul continues, “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Again he says, “For Jesus must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death!” Death is the enemy, and God does not deal with the enemy! God is not a killer but the God who raises the dead! HALLELUJAH!

The God revealed in Christ is One who would rather be afflicted than afflict, would rather be destroyed than destroy, would rather die than damn, and did.

Our God does not deal with us according to justice but according to mercy.

Our God does not afflict but comforts us.

Our God does not kill but raises the dead.

You know, I can feel comfortable in the presence of a God like that. I can almost love a God like that. Actually, I can altogether love a God like that.

Conclusion:

Let me now tell you about Deanna and her first bike. It was a present marking her fifth birthday. She had already learned to ride her older brother’s Stingray bikes, but this was the first one where she could actually sit on the seat and peddle at the same time. Around and around the block she rode with a whole neighborhood of friends in tow.

I happened to step outside just as she turned the corner. As she accelerated she yelled, “Watch, Dad, no hands!” Sure enough, she whizzed by with no hands. But as she was about even with me, I saw that front wheel begin to shimmer and, sure enough, she crashed in a screaming heap right on the edge of our neighbor’s yard. I stood on the front steps and yelled at her, “Serves you right Deanna! How many times has Daddy told you not to ride without hands? I’m glad you crashed. I hope you busted yourself up good and learn a lesson you’ll never forget!”

Now you know I didn’t say that. Not in a thousand years would I respond like that. When I saw that front wheel begin to shimmer I was already making giant leaps across the lawn. No sooner had she crashed into a screaming heap, but that I was there untangling little girl from bike. I tested her carefully first, to make sure there were no broken bones. Then I gathered her up in my arms and carried her into the kitchen. All the while she was screaming loud enough to raise the dead in Boise. I got out a washrag, dampened it with warm water, and began to wipe carefully the sand and grit out of her multiple scrapes on knees, elbows, and arms. I got our medicine kit. I dug out the first-aid ointment and liberally spread it everywhere. I opened a new box of Band-Aids and began to apply them on her cuts, on her scratches, on her bruises, and on a lot of other places as well for good measure. I think I emptied that box putting Band-Aids all over her body. I kissed away her tears and told her that I loved her.

Ten minutes later she was back outside, riding her bike—no hands!

If I, a human father, care about my daughter, how much more does our heavenly Father care about you and me?