The Gospel in Ten Words (13 page)

In the market for
performance-based acceptance, your value to any organization is defined by your
ability to produce. Those who get the results get the recognition. But in the
kingdom of God your value is determined by the One who accepts you. Your value
is not based on your results or your fruit but your Father’s unconditional
approval.

God
accepts you! (I’ll keep banging this drum until I get an “Amen.”) Whether you
preach a thousand sermons or none at all, your heavenly Father is thoroughly
pleased with you. There is nothing you can do to make him more pleased than he
already is. Just as your good works don’t make you any more pleasing to God,
neither do your bad works make you less pleasing
. If you yell
at the kids and fight with your spouse you are still acceptable. You may need
to make peace with your family but you already have everlasting peace with God
on account of Jesus.

This
is so alien to the way we have been raised that we have trouble believing it.
“But I’m a total failure. Look at the mess I have made of my life.” And God
responds, “You’re my beloved child and I am well pleased with you.”

Our
Father’s loving affirmation is completely at odds with the fault-finding
messages of this broken world. We are constantly being told, “You’re not good
enough. You’re not smart enough, tall enough, rich enough, or cool enough. Your
teeth aren’t white enough or straight enough. Your skin is the wrong color,
your body is the wrong shape, and you smell bad.” Listen to this twaddle long
enough and you’ll end up a miserable wreck. You’ll make yourself susceptible to
the seductive lies of advertisers and snake oil salesmen.

If
you want a proper estimation of your true worth, don’t look at your academic
transcripts or your resume and definitely don’t look in the mirror. Instead,
look to the cross. Jesus loves you more than his own life. That’s the message
of the gospel and it’s the cure for mother wounds, low self-esteem, and all
forms of rejection.

Understand
that there are different voices all competing to be heard and that you have to
choose whom you will heed. On the one hand you have broken people speaking lies
about you that really say more about their own brokenness than yours, and on
the other you have Almighty God declaring his unconditional acceptance of you.
The world finds fault with you and does nothing to help, but God says, “You’re
mine” and pours out his favor.

Who
will you listen to?

When you know God is
pleased with you regardless of your productivity, it will free you from the pressure
to perform. When you’ve heard God say “Yes” to you, it will empower you to say
“No” to the unhealthy demands of Pharaoh’s whip-cracking taskmasters. If you
have been burning the candle at both ends trying to get ahead, a revelation of
God’s acceptance will bring you to a place of rest. It will get you off the
merry-go-round and sit you down in pastures green.

But that doesn’t mean you will be idle. Those who wait upon the
Lord renew their strength (Isaiah 40:31). Paradoxically
, those who have been
freed from the need to produce are often the most productive people around.
This happens because the loving acceptance of another brings out the best in
us, particularly if the
Other
is someone special.

Perhaps
you have had the pleasant experience of being accepted by the most beautiful
girl in the room or the best man in the house. It is the thrill of being
elevated to a higher level. “Really?! You choose me? But you’re way out of my
league.” As nice as that is, it pales in comparison to the lift that comes from
being accepted by the Maker of heaven and earth. To the glory of his grace you
have been lifted out of the miry clay and seated with him in heavenly places.
Talk about your upward mobility.

With God on our side
like this, how can we lose? (Romans 8:31b, The Message)

When
you realize that God is for you, it gives you boldness. You begin to strut, not
out of arrogance but confidence. “God is on my side. How can I lose?” You’ll
walk into the lion’s den with a holy swagger and face the furnace without fear.
“God is with me. I will not be burned” (see Isaiah 43:2).

Situations
that intimidate the socks off your coworkers won’t bother you in the slightest.
You’ll go in front of performance reviews and interview panels with complete
peace and without any desperate need to impress. “My promotion comes from the
Lord. If these guys see that, great, if they don’t, that’s their problem.”
Secure in your Father’s approval, you won’t be bothered whether your ministry
flourishes or flounders. “It’s his church anyway. I’m just pleased to play a
part.”

But
the good news is you won’t fail. How can you? When you are confident of your
Father’s absolute delight in you,

You’ll
be on your way up!

You’ll
be seeing great sights!

You’ll
join the high fliers who soar to high heights.
[43]

With
all due respect to Dr. Seuss, this is not about the empowerment that comes from
self-belief but the divine and uplifting influence of God’s mighty grace.

Sons
and daughters who are supercharged by their Father’s favor shine like stars
(Philippians 2:15). Elevated by his love they mount up with wings like eagles.
They race against horses and walk on water, living testimonies of the
energizing power of his divine acceptance.

Divine acceptance will change the world but before it does it must
first change the church. For too long the church has been known as a place of
rejection, judgment, and condemnation. This is the inevitable consequence of
mixing grace with law and preaching a partial gospel. This mixed message makes the
children of God fearful of their heavenly Father, it causes the saints to hang
back in the fringes of the kingdom, and it paints a frown on the face of Love.

Can you imagine God the Father frowning at
Jesus? Of course not. Then neither is he frowning at you.

In the old covenant they prayed for the day
when the Lord would make his face shine upon you, be gracious to you, and give
you peace. The good news is that you are living in that day. He is looking at
you full in the face and beaming with a galaxy-sized smile. You are the apple
of his eye and he rejoices over you with singing.

When we see this it will transform us from
the inhospitable church we are to the accepting church we are called to be.
“Accept one another, as Christ accepted you” (Romans 15:7). Imagine if we did
that. We wouldn’t be able to exclude the rabble and the riff-raff from our
congregations and communion. Instead, we would have to start making welcome
announcements like this:

We extend a special
welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, gay, filthy rich, black and
proud,
y no habla Ingles
. We extend a special welcome to those who are
newborns, poor as dirt, skinny as a rail, or got a hitch in their git-along.
You’re welcome here if you’re “just browsing,” just woke up, or just got out of
jail. We don’t care if you’re more Lutheran than Luther, or more Catholic than
the Pope, or haven’t been in church since little Sophia’s dedication. We offer
a special welcome to those who could lose a few pounds, think the earth is
flat, work too hard, can’t spell, or came because grandma’s in town and wanted
to go to church. We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer
right now, are three-times divorced, had religion shoved down your throat as a
kid, or got lost in traffic and wound up here by mistake.
We welcome those who
are in recovery or still addicted.
If you blew all your offering money at the
dog track, you are welcome here.
We welcome tourists, seekers, doubters,
bleeding hearts … and you. Welcome Home!
[44]

Freedom is found in
the Father’s acceptance. When you know beyond all doubt that you are your
Daddy’s delight, you will be set free from the need to please others. The
pressure to perform will lift and the unholy expectations of men will seem ridiculous.
My Father is pleased with me. I don’t have to prove a thing!
If thoughts
of rejection should enter your head, you will dismiss them without a care.
God
is for me! Who can be against me?

Secure
in your Father’s favor you will become fearless and bold. You will dine in the
presence of your enemies and laugh in the face of adversity. You will dance
upon the waves of circumstance and when you are tried by fires of life you
shall not be burned.

The
gospel is not an invitation to accept Jesus; it is the stunning announcement
that he accepts you. Although the law reveals it is impossible for you to make
yourself acceptable and pleasing to God, the gospel of acceptance declares that
in Christ you have been made acceptable for eternity. Nothing you do can make
you more or less pleasing to God than you already are. All this is to the
praise of the glory of his grace.

We have been made
holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews
10:10)

If you were to take a
trip to heaven, you might hear the angels crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God Almighty.”
[45]
God is holy but what is holiness? For many years I thought I knew. Then I
realized that what I thought of as holiness did not come close to describing
the Lord. When I found out what holiness really means, I was stunned. I began
to understand why the angels sing.

True
holiness is breathtaking. Yet most Christians don’t know what it is. They know
they are supposed to be holy or sanctified but they have been offered an
imitation brand of holiness that is a shadow of the real thing. They have been
told sanctification is like gym membership. “You’ve got to sign up, make a
commitment, and work at it. Don’t expect instant results,” the gym instructors
say, “because the process of becoming holy is a work of gradual development. It
takes time and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever make it. But keep coming to
class and handing over your money because without holiness no one will see the
Lord.”

In
the pursuit of holiness entire movements have been launched and countless
sermons have been preached and not one of them has ever succeeded in making
anyone holy.

So
what is holiness and how do we attain it?

There are many
definitions of holiness. For some, holiness means the avoidance of sin. This
definition is informed by the old covenant law found in the first few books of
the Bible. The law contains a list of things you should not do, should not
touch, and should not eat. Back then if you wanted to stay undefiled, you had
to avoid trimmed beards, tattoos, bacon, and lepers.
[46]

In
the modern world, the list of untouchable items varies but the same basic rule is
still observed; to be holy you have to steer clear of contaminating sin. But
defining holiness as the avoidance of sin is like defining light as the absence
of darkness. Technically it’s true, but it’s a poor definition. It is defining
the thing in terms of something that is not the thing. It doesn’t actually tell
us what holiness is. Neither does it describe a God who was holy long before
there was any sin to avoid. In the beginning, there was no sin, and yet God was
just as holy then as he is today. He was unblemished before there were
blemishes.

So
what is holiness? Some say it is being set apart from the world. “It’s coming
out from among them and being separate.” Okay, but again that’s a weak
definition. It’s like describing God as “not the devil.” This interpretation
also conveys the idea that God is allergic to sin, which isn’t true. His holy
grace is greater than our unholy sin.

“But
wasn’t Jesus said to be undefiled and separate from sinners?” (see Hebrews
7:26). He was, and yet he was also the sinner’s friend. His heart was for the
unclean, the unhealthy, and the ungodly. The problem with a lot of holiness
preaching is that it makes us unfriendly towards sinners. Unlike Jesus, we
don’t spend any time with them. We dare not. We might catch something.

Others
try a more positive spin. “It’s not what we’re separated
from
, but what
we’re separated
to
. Holiness is being dedicated to God.” Okay, that’s
fine I guess. But how does this apply to a holy God? Are we saying God is
dedicated to himself?

“Holiness
is God-fearing godliness.” So now we’re saying God is godly? That he reveres
himself and is Self-fearing?! The mind boggles.

 “Holiness
means ‘worthy of devotion.’ A holy God is worthy of our worship.” True, God is
worthy, and yet the Bible says the angels are also holy. Should we worship
them? The saints are holy too. Should we worship ourselves?

See
the problem? We don’t really know what holiness means. And if you don’t know
what holiness is, how are you going to heed all those New Testament
instructions to “be holy”? How are you ever going to see the Lord?

Okay,
we have danced around the target long enough. It’s time to zero in on the true
meaning of holiness.