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Exactly whom does God
hold accountable for a person's sins?
Ezekiel 18:20—The soul that sins shall die. The
son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, the father suffer
for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be
upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
Read verses 1-20 to get
the entire picture. God
holds each man and woman responsible for their own sins.
One cannot blame dad and mom, or anyone else for that matter, for
the choices he or she makes concerning behavior.
It is important to make
this point, because many times it is true that there are childhood
events that can become unconscious drivers for destructive behavior in
adulthood. These events happen to unwary, and virtually unprotected
innocent children by those who are supposed to love and accept them.
There are harmful messages sent out from parents, society, and
even graceless religion that are very shameful and hurtful to the child.
If the child "agrees" with these wrongful assessments
that seem to be defining who they are and aren't, then this gives Satan
a potentially life-long stronghold to do his heart-destroying work on
the individual. If this
goes unchecked in childhood, the adult consciously forgets about the
events, but continues unconsciously to be driven by the past hurts and
agreements. These then must
be dealt with in adulthood.
The counseling one may
choose to receive, can help an individual come to knowledge of what has
been going on within him or her, without having had a conscious
awareness of it. Becoming
aware of these deeper issues is extremely helpful, however, it needs to
be just the first step in repentance.
As an adult person, we are expected to act on the understanding
we have. God holds us
responsible for the unhealthy or healthy state of our hearts and minds.
Somewhere along the line, we have "agreed" (mistakenly)
in our hearts what others have said about us--that we are less
than what we were created to be. In various ways, this has led us
to act out our lives in less than a godly fashion.
The sin we see (and contribute to) all around us is the result of
people demanding a love from others they cannot give to themselves, and
all the while living in fear that they will be "found out" as
not really deserving that love after all.
Envy, jealousy, covetousness, anger, wrath, slander, gossip, murder,
adultery, addictions of all kinds, and even wars are the result.
We grasp at life in order to get all we can out of it, and step
all over other people, lest they should get it instead of us.
Insecure adults equal self-absorbed adults.
And again, God holds each of us responsible for the actions that
proceed from such a broken heart.
That being said,
however, Jesus came to heal the broken-hearted, and to set the captives
free. Those who through
fear of death (the ultimate rejection of the Creator/Father in a
perceived knowledge/performance system) have all their lifetime been
subject to bondage—the bondage of sin.
As we know, there is no fear in love.
Love is not of fear. Yet,
a performance mentality has under-girded relationships since Adam
and Eve chose that mentality by eating of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil. This approach has engendered shame, which in turn has
led to fear. Jesus came to
present a different way—a way that would be the foundation of the new
world order prophesied in the Law and the Prophets.
It is the way of grace and faith.
It is where grace is the way of the Parent, and faith is the
natural result in His children. Acceptance and love for imperfect, but honest, sincere, and
transparent children, breeds faith in the same. Shame is replace by a healthy pride within the children of
God. It is a humble pride
where a child accepts his or her created glory, but confesses that it is
a reflected glory that comes from Dad.
Jesus proclaimed the
good news of the kingdom of God, which was prophesied from days of old
to be established on the earth at the appointed time, through God's
human agent, referred to in Daniel as the Son of Man.
This Son of Man would be conceived by God through the Holy Spirit
in a virgin in His nation, Israel.
The angel, Gabriel announced that this Jesus would
be that first-born son of God, and the one prophesied to usher in that
kingdom. At the appropriate
time, Jesus the anointed one, began to preach the good news of this
coming kingdom, asking men and women to repent and believe in that
message. Later, after his
death, his disciples began to preach this same kingdom message plus the
fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead, which event confirmed him
as the one ordained to usher in that kingdom at a future appointed time
known only by the Father.
Jesus described this
kingdom message he preached, as a "seed"—the seed,
that if understood and believed, would lead to repentance and to being
saved. This salvation has
to do with the entire life of a man or woman.
First, it means a salvation from the bondage to sin in this life;
and second, salvation from corruptible flesh to incorruptible spirit in
the age to come. Both of
these would be accomplished through forgiveness of sins, and through an
ongoing, healing presence of Jesus within the person being saved.
How could this message about a future kingdom of God on earth be
a seed to this kind of holistic salvation?
Because no one had ever presented this gospel in the way God's Son
did.
Jesus, in the presenting
of this kingdom gospel, was giving hope and motivation to people such as
they had never had before. The
system of this world, established on the foundation of the knowledge and
performance of good and evil, had produced nothing in terms of
spiritually healthy hearts.
Instead, the cycle of shame, fear, and sin have held people in
bondage to a life without the fulfillment they were meant to experience,
and then finally in bondage to death. We come to really know we are sick—that something is
fundamentally wrong with our lives, when it seems as though we will
never experience the fulfillment of the desires God placed individually
in each of our hearts. We
resign ourselves to lives of woefully insignificant levels of
creativity, achievement, and love.
And, we often believe that the future life of the spirit world,
most certainly must belong to those who seem to have it all together,
not to us. But we also wonder, what kind of real, meaningful life
can there be up in the clouds plucking harps and singing never-ending
hymns in the sky? The whole
picture of our lives now and in our future can be very discouraging, not
really the "good" news our hearts need.
But again, this is not
true of the "seed" message of the kingdom as Jesus presented
it. According to him, the
kingdom belongs to those who are, in fact, imperfect—but those who
have come to see the deep repentance and healing of the heart that is
needed. They are those who
hear Jesus saying that the kingdom belongs to those who are like
children—obedient out of faith, a faith based on the grace innate to
God's nature, especially in this case, to His beloved children.
Those in whom the seed takes a root leading to fruit, are those
who hear and believe that God's only requirements of us at the start of
our journey with Dad, are for us to be honest, sincere, transparent, and
open. In short, we are to
believe in His love and acceptance of us as we are, and then in this
secure environment, love Him in return.
God knows that if this is the beginning of our relationship with
Him, we will have the soundness of heart and mind to love our neighbors
as well. In other words,
our hearts being assured of God's love for us, and filled up to the brim
with that love, will overflow to those around us.
In still other words,
the coming Kingdom of God will be based at its very foundation on a
system other than performance and knowledge.
It will be based on grace and faith.
Those who enter that kingdom will be those who are willing and
eager to live under such a system, with all the openness, honesty, and
sincerity that are part and parcel with it.
And not only that, but it will be a place where our new
incorruptible bodies will experience all the joys of living in
much the same way we have experienced some of those joys as human
beings in this age. We will
do this because our life will be here on this beautiful earth, and we
will be able to see, taste, touch, smell, and hear all and more of what
this creation was made to offer us. We will reign over the creation as never before, while still
being very much an interactive part of it.
Yet, at the same time, we will not have to grasp for happiness
and joy any longer. It will
be the natural outgrowth of the new grace/faith system of things that
Jesus spoke of and modeled in his life on earth. We WILL have the
desires of our hearts after all. Praise God for the new heart He
has given to every converted Christian. Our heart becomes renewed
as it was first created, and we become born again. It has replaced
the heart of stone we had, the heart that could only respond (howbeit
ineffectively) to ordinances and laws written on tablets of stone.
We can begin to
experience the joys of this healthy new world even now, because Jesus
said he came to heal the broken-hearted and set the captives free.
This is not reserved only for the world to come, but for now, as
he prepares our hearts for that kingdom.
We can begin, under the grace and in the faith of this new
approach/system, to experience his healing of our broken hearts even
now. We
can't experience the fullness of our desires for transcendence now, of
course. But we can sense what is to come, and it give us patience
to fight against the old man who keeps popping up his/her ugly head, and
to live righteously under grace. We have been let down by
so much in our lives, people we love and know, society in general, and
even those who have had a spiritual charge in our lives.
And we have in turn let others down as well.
But it is not others we have to please, and it is not their
acceptance or love that we ultimately need.
It is God we please, and His love and acceptance we desire and
need. If God be for us, who
can be against us. In Jesus we know for a fact, no one can. |