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Jesus loves the wrong people (Mark 2:13–17)
One of the great joys of the Internet is the ability to access endless reams of useless information, such as an incredible list of Yogi Berra quotes. Of course, some of them are real, and some are fake, so you can’t believe everything you read. As Yogi himself put it, “I didn’t say everything I said.”
If you’re still reading this and haven’t yet fluttered off to Google in search of more Yogiisms, I really appreciate it.
One of the classic Yogi quotes is this gem: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Well, we all know that vague, unsettling feeling that somehow we’ve been here or done this before. That sense of déjà vu is what we should be getting when we read Mark 2:13–17. Here, we find Jesus passing alongside the Sea of Galilee. He sees a man hard at work and tells him, “Follow me.” The man drops what he’s doing and immediately follows Jesus.
Sound familiar? That’s how Jesus called his first disciples, Simon, Andrew, James, and John. When he did it the first time, nobody really minded. Sure, it was a little odd for a rabbi to seek out his followers and not vice versa. And it was a little odd for a rabbi to choose grown men already devoted to a particular line of work. However, nobody seemed too offended by it. Maybe the people of Capernaum were proud that this sensational teacher had hand-picked some of their own to be his followers.
As proud as they were then, they sure must be upset now. This time, Jesus has chosen a man named Levi—a tax collector. Now, in American culture, nobody is really a fan of tax collectors. In fact, a man made headlines recently for crashing a small airplane into an IRS office building in Austin, Texas. Most people, however, won’t get too mad at someone for being an IRS agent.
The difference between American tax collectors in the present day and Jewish tax collectors in the first century was the degree of corruption. Most IRS employees are just doing their job. However, tax collectors in Jesus’ time were well-known for overcharging, for skimming off the top, for essentially running a crime syndicate. Worse yet, they worked for the hated Roman oppressors; most Jews viewed them not only as thieves but as traitors. They were treated as outcasts from Jewish society; anyone who associated with them was considered to be defiled. So naturally, the only companions of a tax collector were prostitutes and other “sinners” who were fellow outcasts. Jesus’ countrymen probably would have loathed tax collectors and their ilk to the same degree that we loathe inner-city gang members.
So, of course, Jesus picks one of these scoundrels to follow him. Then he throws a party and invites all of Levi’s disgusting friends.
The religious teachers, who serve as the conscience of the community, are not happy. They already got ticked off the other day because Jesus claimed to have authority to forgive sins, which is something only God can do. Now, this man—who had seemed so much like the Messiah!—is not behaving like even a respectable Jew ought to behave. Something must be done about this rogue teacher. They corner a few of his disciples and question them, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” You can almost hear the contempt dripping from their mouths. And who can blame them? These sinners are absolutely rotten; they’ve gotten rich by cheating and stealing money from poor villagers, making a lot of people in Capernaum utterly miserable. These are sick people whom Jesus is treating like friends.
Jesus hears that the religious leaders are upset at him. Their attitude bothers him so much that he steps outside the house to confront them. He doesn’t apologize for what he’s doing; and he certainly doesn’t try to convince them that deep down inside, these tax collectors and sinners are basically good people. They aren’t. And that’s the point. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” Jesus explains. “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus has come for one group of people: sinners. Broken people. Scum of the earth. If you’re not in that category, then Jesus isn’t really interested in you. If you do fit that description, then Jesus wants you to drop your old way of life, trust him, and follow him. He isn’t ashamed to be seen with you. Your sin is not holding him back from asking you to be with him; it’s the very reason why he’s calling you. Jesus is in the business of rescuing sinners. If you’re a sinner, this is really, really good news.
If you’re not a sinner, then this is really, really offensive news. It means that Jesus doesn’t want to be around you. It means that Jesus isn’t interested in calling you to follow him. It means that Jesus is going to pass you by and call people that disgust you. He will love them, he will throw a party for them, and you’ll be left outside—cynical, bitter, and fuming.
Do you want to know Jesus and understand his love? Open your eyes and see the truth: you are a sinner. You are dirty, rotten, revolting, and sick. Then you’ll see that Jesus has come for you.
The Broken Rose
~ ~ ~
The Broken Rose
Who would love the blossomed rose—
Luster her alluring pow’r,
Fragrance of arousal crowned?
Lovers all ablaze surround—
Bloom and root and stem devour.
Who would want the broken rose?
Seared in sin, in ashes grown;
Tortured pale, her petals torn;
Leaves are lost and left the thorn
Naked on the stem, alone.
Jesus wants the broken rose
While her twisted shape is thrown,
Shriveled, to the wilting scorn:
“Leave, oh, leave her not forlorn,”
Wept and whispered for his own.
Jesus loves the broken rose,
Waters with a bleeding show’r;
Root has gripped the sanguine ground;
Drops of blood, their riches found,
Rise through stem and red the flow’r.
~ ~ ~
Photo by David Garzon
“You will be like God”
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 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.
—Genesis 2:16–17
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
—Genesis 3:4–5
“You will be like God.” The first sin was what D. A. Carson calls “the de-Godding of God.” This was the devil’s selling point when tempting Eve. Up till now, she had submitted to God’s authority; now, he was giving her the opportunity to break the shackles of obedience and declare herself sovereign and independent. Now she would no longer have to rely on God’s judgment of what was good and evil. She could take that knowledge for herself and thus have no need for God.
We may acknowledge the existence of God, but it’s his lordship that is the real threat to us. I want to be sovereign over my own little kingdom. I don’t mind having God as the royal figurehead, just as long as I get to be the one who is really in control.
A corollary of this attitude is that I must do anything and everything to assert my kingship over my little corner of the universe. On the one hand, this means that I commit acts of defiance against the true King. I know his will, as revealed in scripture. I know what he says is right and wrong. But in both the big and little decisions of life, I decide that I know better than him what is best for me, and I choose to do things that are an affront to his holiness and an insult to his gracious love.
Usually, though, I prefer to adopt a more passive approach. It’s much more respectable. Here, I simply avoid doing anything difficult—anything that I can’t handle with my own strength. I keep to the domain of easy things—of watching TV, surfing the Internet, going through the motions at work and church—things that I am sufficient to handle. I avoid the ministry of the gospel, because there “our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5). I avoid anything that would force me to cry out to God for help.
A few months back, I witnessed this passive defiance in someone else. I saw a high school student who decided after lunch to lie down on the floor and refuse to move for over an hour. As I listened to the teachers trying to reason with him, I realized that the problem was not that this student hadn’t thought through his actions and needed to hear good reasoning. Rather, he knew exactly what he was doing. His highest priority was not his academic career but rather the need to demonstrate that he was in control, not his teachers. No doubt he was miserable, lying facedown on the carpet with frustrated people standing around him, explaining to him how he would be punished for his behavior. This misery was the price he had to pay to assert his sovereignty.
When we defy the Lord—by refusing to obey him fully, by refusing to live out his Word, by refusing to do hard things for him—we are just as pathetic as this student. We are feeble rebels, but rebels all the same. Whether actively or passively defying God, we are insurrectionists against him. We are all guilty of the highest treason.
All of this leads to one of the most profound questions in all of scripture: what kind of King gives his only, beloved Son to die in the place of his enemies who rebelled against him?
“You will not surely die”
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 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.
—Genesis 2:16–17
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.”
—Genesis 3:4
And thus encouraged, Satan comes on stronger with a flat-out contradiction—the first contradiction of something that God says in scripture. And the first contradiction is the contradiction of the doctrine of judgment: “You shall not surely die.” It is not always the case, but it is often the case that when orthodoxy begins to go astray, it goes astray on the doctrine of judgment. For, after all, if you can remove the ultimate sanction, then there is less threat to go astray in a lot of other areas.
—D. A. Carson, “Sin and the Fall”
“You will not surely die.” This is a common lie about sin, and it is the oldest lie. It is a lie found in the heights of human arrogance: “A God of love would never send people to hell! If God is like that, I won’t believe in him!” It is a lie found in the depths of human weakness: “If I give in to this temptation, God will still forgive me.” Both of these statements are utterly Satanic. Those who say them—and who has not thought either one or the other?—are imitating the devil himself.
What is at the heart of this lie? It is a denial of the holiness of God. It ignores his moral purity. It imagines that God is all love and no holiness. Of course, this is nonsense—God’s holiness and his love are inseparable—but to our foolish ears, it sounds good. Good enough, anyway, to give us an opening for sin. It is not an appreciation of God’s love; rather, this lie tramples on his love. “Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4).
Last night was Good Friday. Our church memorialized the crucifixion of Jesus Christ with a special service structured around the seven sayings of Christ on the cross. The cross itself, and the Savior who was hanged on it, are a testament to the falsehood of Satan’s lie. The truth was found in the words of God: “You shall surely die.” For the sin of the world, death was required. It was supplied by the perfect God-man, Jesus Christ. He died in our place, bearing the full penalty for our sins, satisfying the holy wrath of a holy God.
The sacrifice of Jesus Christ was not intended to allow us to live life as usual, presuming on God’s kindness. Let’s remember the extreme cost of our sin, the curse that awaited us, and stand in awe of our Savior’s love.
Shabernacle (or, The Shack and the Tabernacle)
How would you like to have your appendix removed with a rusty scalpel?
Sorry, that’s kind of a weird question. But it’s not random. In a sense, I think that something similar is going on among American Christians today, particularly those who are reading the ultra-popular book The Shack. Many people are raving about how this book has deepened their relationship with God. I don’t doubt that this is happening; this book has a lot of truth in it that is cutting out infection in people’s lives. However, it is also riddled through and through with severe errors, and I am afraid that these errors will be unconsciously absorbed by those who read it, until over time a newer and more severe problem will develop. A rusty scalpel may cure an immediate illness, but it will introduce a more severe infection that may ruin the whole body.
So why am I writing about this book again? Didn’t I already cover it a few months ago?
True, I wrote a three-part series of posts on The Shack. To be honest, though, I never really felt like I had a total grasp on what I liked and didn’t like about the book. That changed earlier this year after I finished studying the tabernacle for seminary (my two earlier posts on the tabernacle can be found here and here). I found that the tabernacle was a helpful lens through which to view The Shack. This is because The Shack is, in effect, a sort of tabernacle; the book is all about our relationship with God. So let’s line The Shack and the tabernacle up next to each other and see what they tell us about God. Where do they agree (the good points of the back) and where do they disagree (the bad points of the book)? We’ll do this by asking several key questions.
1. Does God love people?
The Tabernacle: Yes! The tabernacle was the means by which a holy God could dwell with the people whom he loved. After being delivered from Egypt, as they prepared to meet this God, Moses wrote a song with these lines: “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode” (Exod 15:13). God loves people—and in particular, the people whom he has chosen for his own!
The Shack: Yes! This is a point that is beaten to death, and that’s a good thing. Papa (the Father) tells Mack that he is “smack dab in the center of my love” (p. 98). However, there is a question as to what William Young thinks love is. For example, he claims that the people who know God are “the ones who are free to live and love without any agenda” (p. 181). Love without an agenda is no love at all! Love always has an agenda—to see others conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
2. Does God want to be in relationship with people?
The Tabernacle: Yes! The whole point of the tabernacle is that it is the dwelling place of God among his people. God could have remained aloof, observing the world from afar. Instead, he chose to be closely involved, meeting and talking with his people in the tabernacle (Exodus 25:22).
The Shack: Yes! In fact, the book is focused on the idea of relationships—between God and man as well as between man and his fellow man. Papa tells Mack, “I desire to be in relationship with every human being” (p. 100). Now, there are strong indications that Young’s idea of relationship is markedly different from the biblical idea of relationship (that is, God’s idea of relationship). But we’ll get to that later.
3. Is God holy?
The Tabernacle: Yes! You can’t miss this theme; it’s the single reason for the entire book of Leviticus. Throughout Exodus 26–31, God insists that the place where he dwells and the people to whom he ministers be holy as well. Holiness means “set apart”—particularly in a moral sense, in which God command us to be holy as well (Leviticus 11:44–45).
The Shack: Yes. Papa tells Mack, “I am what some would say ‘holy, and wholly other than you’” (p. 98). However, beyond this concept of being something other, there is hardly any mention of holiness in the book. There seems to be almost no concept of holiness as moral purity, and Mack is never told that he must be holy. While The Shack focuses on the love of God, it almost totally ignores his holiness.
4. Is there any obstacle between man and God (i.e. sin)?
The Tabernacle: Yes! The unholiness of man due to his sin is what separates man from God. Leviticus emphasizes the defilement of sin that hinders the close communion that God wants with his people. In Exodus 32, the people build a golden calf as an alternative worship system; God nearly wipes them out in his wrath because they have “sinned a great sin” (Exodus 32:30). Sin in the Bible damages our relationship with God; it is identified as breaking his law, as failing to love him, as being morally twisted and corrupted, and ultimately as rebelling against his authority.
The Shack: Yes. The Shack emphasizes many things that stand between us and God; essentially, Young views “sin” as anything that hinders our relationship with God. Throughout the book, he places particular emphasis on fear, a lack of trust in him, and independence from him. All well and good! However, he also adds hierarchy and institutions to the list. In other words, authority and institutions (whatever he means by that) are inherently sinful. This flies in the face of what God really teaches in the Bible; the authority of God is a great thing, and he gives authority to people as well. He also institutes marriage, human government, and the church, among other examples. Young’s idea of relationship has more in common with hippie communes than with the love relationship that the true God wants us to have with him.
5. How does God handle sin?
The Tabernacle: Ultimately, there are two ways that God handles sin. One is to punish the sinner. In the Second Commandment, forbidding idolatry, he declares, “I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:5–6). That God punishes evildoers is an inescapable theme of both the Old and New Testaments. Yet there is hope for us in a second way! In the Old Testament, the Lord offered atonement for sins through a ritual known as the Day of Atonement, in which the people’s sins were paid for by the death of an animal as a substitute (Leviticus 16). Ultimately, this prefigured the atonement offered by Jesus Christ (Hebrews 9–10).
The Shack: The Shack has two things to say about sin. One is that sin must be forgiven by God (p. 225). The second is that God does not intend to punish sin. Papa tells Mack, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.” This is only a half-truth. It is true that sin itself can be a punishment (Romans 1:24–31). However, the Bible is crystal clear that God actually does punish sin, both in this life and (more importantly and finally) in the next.
6. Why did Jesus Christ have to die?
The Tabernacle: As we just saw—prefigured by the tabernacle—Jesus Christ had to die to bear the penalty of our sin, satisfying the absolutely just wrath of God against our sin by serving as a substitute for us. And that is just one aspect of the crucifixion! It is because of his sacrifice that we are forgiven of our sins. And it is because of his righteousness that is made ours that we can now boldly come before the God who loves us, in relationship with him (Hebrews 10:19–22).
The Shack: First, Jesus provided the example of a servant who gave up his rights (p. 137); this agrees with the Bible (Philippians 2:5–8). Second, in some sense, what Jesus did allows God to forgive people of their sins (pp. 224–225); obviously, this is true as well. Third, Jesus accomplished the reconciliation of the entire world—meaning every last person on earth—to God (p. 192). Here’s where we run into problems, because first of all, this is nonsense; reconciliation is not possible between a willing party and an unwilling party. In fact, those who do not believe in Jesus Christ “walk as enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18). Fourth, and even more troubling, Jesus did not die to bear the penalty of our sins as a substitute for us. On p. 96, Young (using God the Father as his mouthpiece) insists that God did not forsake his Son at the cross (Jesus was just really whiny in Matthew 27:46, I guess). If he was not forsaken, then we who should be forsaken for our sins have no confidence that Jesus Christ has received this affliction in our place (Isaiah 53). If you think I am reading too much into this, Young himself has explicitly denied that Jesus Christ died as a substitute for us, bearing the penalty for our sins.
Bottom line? It would appear that the God of The Shack is a God of love (sort of), but he/she is not particularly holy. This is not the true God that we are called to worship! I encourage you, if you plan to read this book (or already have), read it with exceptional discernment and caution. Be careful about surgery done with a rusty scalpel.
