Spring Magazine: "Something Is Missing..."

Something is missing in the family of Christ.

It isn't that we aren't doing things right, that we aren't trying, that we don't care. It isn't that we have ignored God's commandments or been unfaithful to Christ; it isn't that we have become apostate. I spend a considerable portion of my time traveling around the country and for the most part God's people, with, of course, some significant and noteworthy exceptions, are doing what they ought to do.

But something is still missing. Nobody talks about it, but we all know it. Most of us have an "emperor-has-no-clothes" agreement with one another not to have seminars on the subject or to bring it up in committee meetings. But, nevertheless, we know. And when we aren't busy doing the right things for God, the void haunts us.

Something is missing. It's missing from our conferences, our churches, and, most tragic, it is missing from our lives.

The older I get the more I realize that Jesus really did come to "set the prisoners free." The more I think about and walk in that freedom, the more I have discovered the exquisite joy in following Him. I am just a beggar telling other beggars where I found bread...and this beggar is still sometimes hungry but he, at least, knows where the bread is.

Of late I have found something most of us, myself included, have missed: the laughter which comes from the freedom Christ gives us...laughter for those whom the good news has not been very good news for a long time.

THE CONTAGIOUS LAUGHTER OF GOD

When Jesus came something new happened. In fact, it was so incredibly new people almost missed it; they didn't expect it.

God laughed-not with the laughter of cynicism, judgment, derision, or sarcasm-but with the free, infectious, joyful laughter of the sovereign Ruler of the universe.

We didn't expect God to laugh that way. We expected Him to be angry, because we knew He had every reason to be angry. We expected Him to bring down justice on the injustice of His world, because we knew Him to be a just God. We expected Him to wipe out the whole mess and start all over. No one would have blamed Him. We expected lightning, wrath, intimidation, and a fearful display of power. We could have understood that.

...But laughter? Nobody expected laughter-free, gentle, accepting, and loving. That's what the incarnation of Christ is all about, and when we fail to see it that way, or when we proclaim it in any other way, we miss the whole point.

You will remember from Luke 4 Jesus' teaching in the synagogue of His hometown. After reading a portion of the prophet Isaiah, He said a startling thing: "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21).

Let me give you the entire quote from Isaiah 61:1-3:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,
Because the LORD has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.

Do you see it? For thousands of years men and women had looked into the heavens and asked, Is there a God? If so, what is He like? Does He care about us? Does He love us? Is He a monster? What does He require? Will He never reveal Himself? Does He take delight in our pain? Where is He? Why won't He tell us His requirements?

And then the laughter of God....

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men....And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-5;14).

Now we can begin to see some of what God was doing in the Incarnation. He was saying, "You people have it all wrong!"

Why was Jesus so angry at the Pharisees and the scribes? Because He had gone to a lot of trouble to give them some very good news about forgiveness, acceptance, and freedom. And they kept getting it wrong. Toscanini, who apologized to the symphony orchestra he was directing for having blown up, said, "The trouble is that God keeps telling me how the music is to be played, and you-you keep getting in the way"

Jesus said the same thing to the religious leaders of His day: "The Father keeps telling me how the music is to be played, and you-you keep getting in the way."

Genuine Christians ought to laugh a lot. In fact, Christians are the only people in the world who have anything to laugh about because God laughed first. And His laughter is contagious. One of the sure signs of God's presence in the midst of His people is the laughter of His people. Let me show you why.

THE FORGIVEN LAUGH

First, laughter and forgiveness go together.

Jesus died for our sin on a cross. He was the substitute for us, the sacrificial Lamb of God, bearing the penalty for our sin. "But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:12-14).

What does that mean? It means you are covered and nobody is keeping score.

Early in my ministry I counseled a woman who, some twenty years before, had been unfaithful to her husband. For years that sin had haunted her. I was the first person she had ever told about it. After we talked and prayed for a long time, I recommended she tell her husband. (That, by the way, isn't always the advice I give. In this case, I knew the woman's husband and knew that her revelation, after the initial shock, would probably strengthen their marriage.) It wasn't easy for her, but she promised she would tell him. "Pastor," she said, "I trust you enough to do what you ask, but if my marriage falls apart as a result, I want you to know that I'm going to blame you."

She didn't smile when she said that, either.

That's when I commenced to pray with a high degree of seriousness. (I pray best when I'm scared.) "Father," I prayed, "if I gave her dumb advice, forgive me and clean up my mess."

I saw her the next day, and she looked fifteen years younger. "What happened?" I asked. "When I told him," she exclaimed, "he replied that he had known about the incident for twenty years and was just waiting for me to tell him so he could tell me how much he loved me!" And then she started to laugh. "He forgave me twenty years ago, and I've been needlessly carrying all this guilt for all these years!"

Perhaps you are like the woman who had been forgiven and didn't know it. Go to the Father and tell Him your sin. You will hear what He has said to so many others: "Child, didn't you know that I already forgave you?" Remember too that the laughter you hear comes from God's people who have been forgiven.

THE MOTIVATED LAUGH

Not only do laughter and forgiveness go together, but laughter and motivation go together too.

You may not believe this, but with all my heart I want to be a good and faithful servant of Christ. I'll bet you do too. After many years as a Bible teacher I have found that the problem in the church is not that people don't want to be good, but that they want to be good and can't.

When I talk about freedom and grace and how God has destroyed the curse of the law, people tell me I'm treading on dangerous ground. "Steve," they admonish, "if you keep talking like that, Christians are going to go out and do what they want." Good. I still maintain that most Christians, if they did what they wanted, would be faithful. I have never heard a single Christian say, "Now that I'm forgiven I can be as bad as I want." (Of course, that kind of Christian may be somewhere. I've read about them in a lot of books and heard about them in a lot of sermons. I just can't find them. Perhaps there is one Christian like that. If any of you can find him, please tell him to stop. He's doing a lot of damage.)

When St. Augustine said, "Love God, and do as you please," he was getting close to God's secret of living the Christian life. At the risk of correcting Augustine (which is highly presumptuous) let me say he got it wrong. He should have said, "Let God love you deeply and completely, and then do as you please."

The problem is not "what we please." Because He has loved us so deeply and completely, Christians really do please to please God. The problem is that we so often fail in our efforts to please Him. Isn't that bad?

No. That's good! Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6).

Let me give you a principle: Anticipating a promised reality is grounds for rejoicing in that reality. Jesus has promised that if you have a hunger and thirst for goodness, you will at some point be good. Because He promised, and because all His promises are fulfilled, you can rejoice as if you had already become good. If you know you're going to get something, you can rejoice almost as much as if you had it.

Let me give you an example: I have determined that in a few minutes, after I finish work, I'm going to the refrigerator and get a dish of ice cream. That is an absolute promise I have made to myself. Just the thought of the ice cream makes the work bearable. Have I eaten the ice cream? No. Is the ice cream in the refrigerator? Yes. I checked. Is it mine yet? No, but it's going to be. The fact that it will be mine gives me a wonderful sense of joy. This rather pedestrian illustration tells us exactly the position of the Christian who has a desire to be good.

Evangelical Christians debate about how we can be assured of salvation. Some say the only way we can be assured of our salvation is to persevere in obedience, and as we obey, we will know we belong to Christ. (Detractors of this particular view call it works salvation.) Others say we can rest on the promise Jesus gave when we were saved; that is, "I accepted the gift of salvation when it was freely offered, and God doesn't lie. Therefore, I am saved." (Detractors of this view call it easy believism.) Still others say we can't know we have salvation-all we can do is hope and keep on trucking. When the game is over God will tell us whether or not we are saved. (Detractors of this view call it daisy salvation: He loves me, He loves me not; He loves me, He loves me not.)

Now, with as much humility as I can possibly muster, I'm going to settle the arguments: The way we are assured of salvation is to check and see if we desire to obey God. Please note: I did not say that you had to obey God 100 percent of the time-only that you have to want to. If you want obedience, you've got salvation. Scripture says, "Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure" (1 John 3:2-3).

Do you see what John is saying? He is saying that the confirmation of your salvation is not in your being like Jesus now but in the hope you have of being like Jesus in heaven. When John gives us a future promise of being like Jesus (i.e., obedient) our desire for the fulfillment of that promise is not only the assurance of our salvation, it is the motivation (i.e., purifies himself) toward the fulfillment of the reality.

The laughter we hear is the laughter of those who have been motivated to goodness. You see, just as hunger presupposes food, and thirst presupposes water, a desire for goodness presupposes its reality.

THE SUCCESSFUL LAUGH

Not only does laughter go with forgiveness and motivation, but laughter and success go together too.

In your Christian life, have you ever felt like you tried-you really tried-but in the end you failed? You really wanted to do better, but you only did worse and you didn't know how to fix it. Maybe you considered giving up completely. You said to yourself, "I'll never get it right. I'm probably not a Christian at all."

Rules and regulations are Satan's way of reminding Christians that they have failed. But even worse, rules and regulations are the reason we do fail.

Let me give you a wonderful secret: When success isn't the issue, success becomes the reality. In other words, success is always a side benefit of something else. You can apply that principle to lots of life's desires, but let me show you how it works with freedom.

Holiness and righteousness is the desire of every Christian. Many Christians say, "I'm going to be holy and righteous even if it kills me." And it usually does. But, and here is the exciting thing: Holiness and righteousness have already been achieved for you by Christ. When you stand before the Father, He sees you as holy and righteous because of the blood of His Son. You are, in fact, justified before God because of the cross.

That is a cold hard fact; you don't have to try so much anymore to be holy and righteous. You are now free to fail and, more importantly, free to allow Him to love you and to love Him back. You enter a relationship, not between a criminal and a policeman, but between a loving Father and His child. When you enjoy that relationship something wonderful happens: You find holiness and righteousness come tagging along behind. You find that you, almost without knowing it, are in a process that makes you increasingly more holy and righteous.

This is the message. Obedience doesn't lead to freedom. Freedom leads to obedience. If that is backwards, you lose both your freedom and eventually your obedience.

Love that makes you free leads to guilt. Guilt leads to confession. Confession leads to more forgiveness. Total forgiveness leads to worship. Worship leads to faithfulness. Faithfulness is the result of a process that begins with love and freedom.

It's all about freedom. It's not about a system-it's about the person of Jesus, who said, "If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36).

A while back, The Anatomy of an Illness told how a man cured himself of cancer by laughing his way to health. He watched funny movies, read funny books, and listened to funny comedians. And then he got well.

That's how God's people get well too. If you listen you can hear them laugh the laughter of freedom, the laughter of the redeemed.

Taken from When Being Good Isn't Good Enough.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version(r). Copyright (c) 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.