Unmasking

Dale — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 17:43:15 +0000

The Unmasking

In “The Final Unmasking” Macdonald asks the question, “Will all my weaknesses, evil habits, pettiness’s, and wrong thoughts I cannot help be revealed to all?” Jesus says, “The time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all.” (Luke 12:2 NLT). “If we can face, with humility, the revelation of the hidden, then we are of the truth and need not be afraid. Because, whatever happens, it will make us faithful, humble, and pure.”

Love

“God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each otherbecause he loved us first. 1 John 4: 16-19 NLT

Real righteousness is characterized by a lack of fear. Those without fear are the ones who have come to know that our Heavenly Father is good, always and forever good, and this goodness convicts and convinces us that all judgment is redemptive. That is, that we no longer need to hide and protect that part of us that we know and realize is dark, from God’s liberating light. If we accept all judgment as redemptive and not punitive, then full exposure means liberation. To be judged by Jesus, the Cosmos’ greatest lover, is to experience love at the hands of that great Lover!

Freedom

This growing freedom expresses itself in being quick to repent and more unrestrained in forgiveness to ourselves and others. Many years ago, a visiting missionary made a profound statement that sums up this reality, “Mental and spiritual health is when the outside person and the inside person are in fact the same person!” Then, this divine judgment acts as the catalyst, the spark, that lights the refiner’s and consuming fires of love.

No religious system or salvation plan can address and provide our overwhelming desire and need to be good as our Heavenly Father is good. None can provide the confidence and assurance our hearts require. This common-sense conviction of righteousness comes from our very consciousness. Nothing short of giving ourselves to the process of wholeness, becoming what we truly are, not just a hypocrite clothed in white, but an earthen vessel filled with light and goodness. The cry of the righteous is “more Lord,” give me more judgment, more light, more of your liberating love!

This is the introductory blog for the following sermon:

The Final Unmasking

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Real Righteousness

Dale — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 17:30:47 +0000

Righteousness

It is to be so in love with what is fair and right to make it impossible for a man to do anything less than be absolutely fair. It is not the love of righteousness in the abstract that makes anyone righteous. It is instead the love of fair play towards everyone we encounter. Anything less than the fulfilling of fair play, in the joy of our divine relationship with others, is not righteousness. Righteousness is simply common sense. It is being in right relationship with everything and everyone in the Divine life of the Trinity and all creation. It is not about being right and everyone being in agreement with us. If we don’t love our neighbors and enemies as the Father, Son, and Spirit do and give to all fair play, we are not and will not be righteous.

Man’s Righteousness

Through our tortured words and concepts, we have invented religious systems that contain no true righteousness, that deny the common sense of the Divine heart and mind. They are systems that misrepresent the very character and nature of God. Claiming we can be made good without being good! Claiming we can be given a place in a heaven of man’s design without real righteousness. God’s heaven is only heaven because of its participants’ union and self-giving love. It is heaven because each one shares their very lives with and for the interest of the others. Heaven is found in this selflessness.

To remain as we are, focused on ourselves, would be to live in disharmony and be incapable of living in or enjoying God’s selfless heaven. It would be as if you told a fish to enjoy life in the sky.

God’s Righteousness

A righteous life is not becoming what we are not, fish becoming birds, but becoming what we are as children of our Father, through the Son, in the power of the Spirit in us! God in His love would never pretend we were right with the cosmos when we were not. For instance, gluing feathers on a fish to make it a bird does not change it from being a fish. Imputed righteousness is an attempt to cover or clothe the fish (us) through the imputation of feathers (righteousness) that does not make us (righteous) birds or capable of living in the sky (heaven)! To enjoy life in the air of heaven, you must be able to fly.

Imputed and legal inventions of righteousness cannot make the selfishness in this life or the next, heaven. To continue to live in unrighteousness would be hell in a heaven whose lifeblood is centered in self-sacrificing love.

Real Righteousness

To be relationally right is righteousness. This righteousness is who and what God is by nature. There is no righteous relationship with our God without thinking what He thinks, loving what He loves, and caring for nothing but His will as Jesus did! Heaven, eternal joy, is to be in harmony, union, and communion with all of Their creation, children, and Life!

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St. Athanasius

Dale — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 19:04:45 +0000

Church Fathers

For me, the “Church Fathers,” as for many of you, were a mystery and of little importance. I would be in my forties before Baxter Kruger would introduce me to my first one, St. Athanasius (296-373). After my first decades among “the frozen chosen” and the next ones among the “cruisamatics,” I had had little interest in our ancient brothers and sisters of the early church. Our brother Athanasius showed up with the discussion of the “Nicene Creed” and its importance in understanding the character and nature of God as Trinity. Not with the concepts of water, steam, and ice like I grew up with in my youth. We can speak of the Trinity and yet, in the practical theology of our lives, be Monotheistic. Not live in a relationship with and from Divine Beings filled with life, fellowship, and the communion of other-centered and self-giving love!

St. Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria

As a young deacon in Alexandria, Athanasius wrote a brilliant work, On the Incarnation, that helped pave the way to the first Council of Nicaea. He was a champion of Nicene orthodoxy and one of two authors of the “Creed.” His ground “was God, being Good.” His grammar, “The Word of God came in His own person . . . because it was He alone, Who could recreate man made after the image.”

“As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do?”

“What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father Who could recreate man made after the Image.”

Athanasius’ position was a simple one that it was only God who could save! God and God alone who can break the power of sin and give Life. And that no creature can save another, that is to say, that only the Creator can save His creation. Thus Jesus is God!

In The Christian Theology Reader, edited by Alister McGrath, Athanasius’ position on the two natures of Christ is presented. “Being God, he became a human being: and then as God he raised the dead, healed all by a word, and also changed water into wine. These were not acts of a human being. But as a human being, he felt thirst and tiredness, and suffered pain. These experiences are not appropriate to deity. As God he said, “I am in the Father, the Father is in me”; as a human being he criticized the Jews, thus: “Why do you seek to kill me, when I am a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from my Father.” And yet these are not event occurring without connection, distinguished according to their quality, so that one class may ascribed to the body, apart from the divinity, and the other to the divinity, apart from the body. They all occurred in such a way that they were joined together; and the Lord, who marvelously performed those acts by grace, was one. When he willed to make himself known as God, he used his human tongue to signify this, when he said. “I and the Father are one.”

Arian Heresy

This Trinitarian position opposed what was known as the Arian heresy named after another Alexandrian bishop named Arius (250-336). Arius, drawing on Monotheistic concepts, would see Jesus as a lesser creature given as a sacrifice to resolve kingdom problems, much like Constantine, as a Sovereign ruler, called for the Council of Nicaea to settle his political issues.

Arian’s position stated that Jesus Christ was “first among the creatures,” first in rank, but created, a creature rather than Divine. That God had always existed and was before the Son; therefore, “There was a time when he (Jesus) was not.” Therefore, Jesus was not Divine. This conflict led to Constantine calling the first Council of Nicaea to resolve the matter and bring peace to his realm in the year 325. Even though only seven of the three hundred and eighteen voted with Arius. Constantine and his household continued to prefer Arius’ position. Athanasius would spend his life at odds with the different emperors in power and be removed and have to flee only to be restored once again to his Bishopric, no fewer than five times. It would not be until 381, after Athanasius’ death, when a Nicene emperor would rule, and Athanasius’ views would be accepted and recognized in the final version of the “Creed.”

C.S. Lewis, who wrote the introduction to an early translation of On the Incarnation, will later summarize this creedal position with his famous “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” statement in Mere Christianity.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

For Athanasius and the other Bishops at the Council of Nicaea, the Incarnation was their good God’s answer, that is the Trinity’s, to Their children’s sin and darkness. They would give Themselves to redeem us through the Son’s incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension!

The Truth of Relationship

For me, this battle over the Divinity of Christ, the character of God, and Jesus’ union with the Father and the Spirit is one of eternal consequence. Athanasius was not fighting for mere doctrine but the central Truth of the universe. The Father and Son’s Life together in union before the beginning is not just “A” relationship, or “THE” relationship, but RELATIONSHIP itself! This relationship is the foundational Truth of the perichoretic Life, defined as the “mutual indwelling of persons without the loss of individuality.” Therefore, this union with distinction of the Trinity ends with all of us included in Their circle of Life! This relationship is intimate relations at their deepest level, described by Gregory of Nazianzus as ” interpenetration.” Without this Truth of a Loving Relationship, there is no Life to share, and life without it would be meaningless both now and later!!!

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All are Alive

Dale — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 13:34:31 +0000

God of the Living

Why do we believe in the power of death more than the power of Life? What does this say about our concept of God? MacDonald uses the story of Martha and Mary and the resurrection of Lazarus in the sermon “The Displeasure of Jesus” to express the truth that, “God is the God of the Living.” He also uses it to discuss Jesus’ anger with our unbelief in Their Life. Every expression of Their anger is a gift from Their other-centered and self-giving love.

All are Alive

Jesus said, “Even Moses exclaimed about resurrection at the burning bush, saying, ‘God: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob!’ God isn’t the God of dead men, but of the living. To him all are alive.” Luke 20:37-38 MSG

MacDonald exposes this lie found in the dramatic example of death as the visible tip of the iceberg of our unbelief. We see all of what we call life through this lens of death. We are so focused on the temporary that the eternal remains unseen! Our Father is the God of the living, and we live from a stream where there is no such reality as death. This Truth of Life extends into all the everyday parts and moments of our existence. God’s Life is abundant Life! We lack nothing in its’ flow, only our unfulfilled wants hinder us. Martha and Mary wanted their brother now, present to their senses, while he, had just for a moment in time, moved from one room to another. Jesus saw the lie of lack and death in their feelings and actions that they really believed Lazarus was no more!

Death is Defeated!

“Jesus loved them so much that He could not stand to see them in their tears shut out His Father. He was irritated that they could sit in the ashes when they should be out in His Father’s wind and sun, and all this pain for a lie! Because the grief in their hearts that made them weep so was false.” GM

Death is not defeat. It is defeated! It is victory over sin and darkness for those who know what Jesus knows about death and Life. For in God, there is nothing but Life! There is nothing but redemption and restoration of all that is lost in our moment of time.

Divine anger is God’s love fighting fire with fire. The “Refining Fire” of Divine love destroying sin and darkness for our liberation before the “Consuming Fire” is required for the same!

All are Alive is the introductory blog for the sermon listed below:

The Displeasure of Jesus

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Incarnation of Light

Dale — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 15:51:17 +0000

The Incarnation

“Think of a group of people trapped in a collapsed mine. And suppose that the rescue team only set up shop on the surface and never actually goes down into the mine. What would the point be? There would be no rescue. The help would not reach the people trapped in the mine. But turn the thought around. Suppose that the rescue team does go down into the mine, but loses contact with the surface crew. In that case they, too, would be lost.

It is necessary that we hold on to both sides of the truth. If Jesus ceases to be himself, the Father’s beloved Son who lives in fellowship with the Father in the Spirit, then all is lost, for he has nothing to give us when he comes to us. If, on the other hand, he lives out his sonship with his Father but does not do so inside Adam’s skin, then his sonship does not reach us; the dance of life of the Trinity flies over our heads.

Once we see with John and Paul and the early Church that the incarnation was a real incarnation, that the Son of God became flesh without giving up is fellowship with his Father, then we are face to face with a paradox that will allow us to see the truth about the work of Christ. In Jesus Christ, a union is forged between two things that do not belong together. On the one side, you have the Triune life of God with all of its face-to-face fellowship and purity and fullness and joy and rightness and integrity. On the other side, you have human existence in all of its hiding, brokenness, corruption, disease, and perversion. The incarnation means that these two worlds are now united.” (C. Baxter Kruger, The Great Dance, pp. 34-35.)

The Restoration of Light!

What a beautiful image of our Divine deliverance! It is noteworthy to say that Jesus not only brought light into the cave of our fallen darkness but that the ultimate purpose was to bring us up and out into the Light of Life! We often see light as just an improvement of life in the mine. A candle, so to speak, in the darkness and confusion of life underground. But this misses the point of the rescue entirely. Jesus does not come to improve our cave-dwelling but deliver us from it both now and forever. We were not made for life in the mine. We were created to be beloved children of our Heavenly Father, brothers and sisters with Jesus and free in the Life and power of the Spirit! We were made for life in a universe full of fellowship in infinite space and time.

Relational Heaven!

“However, what boy, willing to be a disciple of Christ and a child of God, would prefer a sermon to his glorious kite. A kite is the most divine of toys, and with God, Himself as his playmate, watching it together in the blue wind, tossed hither and thither in the golden sky! He might be willing to part with his kite, the wind, and the golden sun and go down into the grave for his brothers, but surely not to be admitted to an eternal prayer meeting!

For my part, I rejoice to think that there will be neither church nor chapel in the heavenlies. Yes, there will be nothing of religion but its Love and no law but the perfect Law of Liberty. There is no need for law or religious practice where every heartbeat expresses the Divine, where selfishness is too revolting to be considered, and every voice is eager with thanksgiving! Where the rushing of these joyful waters is bursting from beneath the throne of God. The waters being the joyful tears of the Universe!

Religion! Where will there be room for it, where the essence of every thought is the Divine? What place for honesty, where love fulfills the law to overflowing! Here a person would rather dive into hell than wrong his neighbor in the smallest way!

Heaven will be continuous fellowship with God, in this relationship, in this very sense of being, is joy! For to experience real Life, there must be actual and conscious contact with its very source. Therefore, this life is simple goodness, as good as the very Life of God is good, filled with the joy of our very being!” (George MacDonald, The Unspoken Sermons, The Inheritance, #36, paraphrase by Dale Howie)

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Two Faces of God?

Dale — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 18:33:50 +0000

Father and Son

John understood the gospel message. He had lived to a ripe old age and was writing at the end of his life. His reflections in his gospel and letters reveal the state of the Church as already in decline. Religion was settling in, and the lawyers were winning. The ground of the struggle between relationship and law was shaping up more clearly. The good news of the Father’s heart of goodness and love was losing ground to systems of sin and judgment. The image and vision of Jesus’ Father as “Abba” was fading to that of a judge and was taking root. John was crying out to restore the glory of the gospel, the message, the declaration of what was beautiful and true!

Father and Son as Light

“We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.” 1 John 1: 1-5 NLT

Two Faces of God?

The challenge of the gospel message is not the overcoming of sin and darkness, but the victory of the light seen in the relationship of the Father and Son shared with us. Light is found in the divine relationship, defined by John as one of joy. There is only union in this light, no division or darkness at all. There are not even shadows in our Father of Light.

They did not create separation. We did. They created no sin, no evil, no hell, and no darkness. All these things were created by us! “And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil.” John 3:19 NAS

Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and other church fathers created this two-faced god of light and darkness. It is incredible how beautifully they wrote of God’s love while penning the worst images of God’s anger, wrath, hatred, and judgment. No wonder we are conflicted and confused!

One Face! face-to-face!

“God is light . . . and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ!”

The Two Faces of God? is the introductory blog for the sermon below:

Light

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Justice as Right?

Dale — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 15:36:04 +0000

Resurrection

Have you ever wondered why, after the resurrection of Jesus, He did not pop into Pilate’s throne room or the monthly meeting of the Sanhedrin? What difference do you think this display would have meant for His claims of righteousness? In the last sermon on “Kingship,” we saw that He could have called on a legion of angels to conquer and rule had He wished. Why does He refuse to prove He is right? All He needed to do was think it, and it would have been so. If it had been me, I would have, if I am honest!

His Kingdom

“Justice” is MacDonald’s first reflection on series three’s theme of “Kingship.” If Jesus is King, then what will His Kingdom look like? Will He use righthanded power to rule, or will He use humility to serve? Will it be a Kingdom of warriors or a Kingdom of children? A Kingdom where the force of law and rules control, or where the power of love yields? Is it about a great king on a magnificent throne thinking how great he is or a servant with a towel and a bowl of water washing feet?

Human government could not fulfill the desire of His heart or accomplish His ends. So, He did not think to use His power to persuade. Or, perhaps more accurately, His Father did not think it, say it, or do it, so neither did He! He in Himself and for Himself did not need to be right!

Stop here for a moment and ponder. As I have said before, being right is over rated and we only imagine we are right despite our emphatic assertions. Of course, Jesus was right, but being right meant nothing to Him. He had no need in Himself to make the point, for to do so would have meant missing the point altogether. The rulers would have known how wrong they were; think of the justification He would have had and the fear and respect it would have created? And here we come to the flaw in the right and wrong righteousness theories of justice. It is we in our self-righteous anger who need to be right, and we tar God’s face with our wrath against wrong and say to ourselves, “that is just like God!” But it is not!

His Justice

Justice for us is about being right. Justice for God is about mercy and love for the wrong-doer. To free the ones from their wrongs is to deliver them from themselves. We must see it, hate it, and desire Their help to destroy it in us. It does not matter where we are on the scale or what yardstick we use. Justice is only achieved when the sinner rejects his yardstick, repents for measuring in the first place, and becomes like his Master. That is to love, both their neighbor and enemy with the same other-centered love that has no party, no clan, and no separation within our common Fatherhood in God!

Justice as Right?

If my idea of justice, or yours, does not create a relationship of love between God and man, and man and man, then it is NOT Divine Justice!

Justice as Right? is the introductory blog for the sermon below:

Justice

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Kingdom?

Dale — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 15:24:11 +0000

Kingdom?

To the human mind and reason, a kingdom is the sovereign reach of its king, his strong right hand of power. To the Divine mind, it is the space within and its corresponding intimate relationship to its king. Divine kingship is not government rule but relational union. Not outside but inside, not external but internal, not doing only but why it is done!

It is the body of Christ in which Jesus is its head, heart, and soul, a peaceful and harmonious community.

New Creation

“For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!”

“What counts is whether we have been transformed into a new creation.” (Galatians 6:15 MSG, NLT)

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT)

The counterintuitive nature of the Lord is expressed clearly in the servant versus the sovereign character of the kingdom. Here, the kingdom life as expressed in sermon one of the first series, “The Child in the Mist,” is finally summarized. The childlikeness that we share with the Father and the Son reaching full expression in Goodness! The Goodness of God’s other-centered and self-giving truth and freedom are found here. And they are fully expressed in the Life of Jesus! They are contrasted with the selfishness of fallen and broken humanity in its self-centered and self-seeking darkness and slavery found in this world.

Kingdom of Children

“But Jesus called them to Himself and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.'” Matthew 20:25-28 NASB

“How terribly have the theologians misrepresented God! Nearly all of them represent Him as a great king on a grand throne; God thinking how great He is; making it the business of His being and the end of His universe the keeping up of His glory, wielding the lightning bolts of Jupiter against those that take His name in vain.” GM

“Theologians have done more to hide the gospel of Christ than any of its adversaries!” GM

Kingdom? is the introductory blog for the sermon below:

Kingship

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Free Indeed

Dale — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 10:40:37 +0000

The Truth will set You Free

“Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.” (John 8:31-32 MSG)

Freedom, like Truth, is found solely in Jesus. To some of us, freedom would be the loss of all that is familiar. All that we have become comfortable within. We have learned to survive in our slavery and are afraid of the unknown world beyond. Freedom would seem like being thrust into that unknown world and asked to trust in someone we do not know.

“Better the devil we know than the one we don’t!”

Free Indeed

“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.” (Ephesians 2:8-10 MSG)

It is the freedom of flight to the bird that has only known the life of the nest. But we were never intended for anything else! It is love that pushes us out into the vastness of space. Love that calls us up to the heavens of flight’s freedom and Life. There is a time for the nest, but we must become what we are, become what we were created to be, let go of the security of the familiar, and rest in the breath of God!

Did you know if you tried to help a chick break out of its shell by putting a small crack in it, it would die on the other side? It is through the effort and struggle of the chick banging away with its beak that its muscles and lungs develop to where it is strong enough to survive on the other side. The same kind of thing is true when it is time to fly. No bird ever learned to fly while staying in its nest.

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8:28 NLT)

“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31 NLT)

God’s purpose for us is freedom, and we are designed to fly!

Free Indeed is the introductory blog for the sermon below:

Freedom

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I Am Truth

Dale — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 17:23:47 +0000

“If anyone tells me it is an easy thing to speak the truth, I should tell him that he had never tried it.” GM

Facts vs. Truth

This sermon, “The Truth,” is for those who are ready to leave “These Things We Believe” for “The One in Whom I Trust!”. This sermon has been a timely and insightful sermon for me. As I am writing these words, I turned sixty-nine, and MacDonald’s thoughts have taken decades for me to be ready to hear and consider. In this sermon, he distinguishes between “facts” and “truth”. To me, in this time of my life, being right is overrated. Facts fall within the context of being right or not and in the facts we think we find understanding and control. I can truthfully say I have at least turned the corner on this one and care little for this major source of strife and division!

Facts are more about outcomes. Truths are more about presence even when we are disappointed in the outcomes. Our Heavenly Father is not faithful because He did this or that. He is faithful because HE IS!!! Christianity was never, to my chagrin, about me getting what I want or fixing what I need fixing, but about being in relationship with Them!

I Am Truth

Truth is a person and Jesus claims this revelation for Himself! Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6 NAS). Therefore, truth is reserved for the highest knowing possible.

Liar, Lunatic, or Lord – C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

This truth has become essential in my everyday life. We are not called upon, for example, to believe the facts about the incarnation, but the truth of it! In contrast to facts, MacDonald asserts that truth is about the meaning, purpose, and intent of something or someone. To be “right” about Jesus is to have read a book about Him. But, to know Him as the “Truth” is to know Him intimately, face-to-face. Reading about Him and learning facts about Him does not lead us to relationship and trust, but knowing His thoughts, mind, heart, intents, and purposes does! To know the Truth of Jesus is to trust in His faithfulness, and faithfulness is one-hundred percent relational.

Truth, as found in the imagination of man, is the power to recognize and think God’s thought about something or someone after Him! To look into the face of a flower, a butterfly, or experience thirst and quenching is to see God’s face and ours!

I Am Truth is the introductory blog for the Sermon below:

The Truth

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