Kingdom Come

It doesn’t take much thought to refute his point of view.

The idea that deadly cancer can be cured without a major disruption to the system is, from an objective point of view, a very pleasant idea, but a fatal one, and so it is with sin. IT IS A MALIGNANT FORCE OF DEATH THAT HAS TO BE FOUGHT.

Whatever Mrs. Adam had been thinking when she ate the fruit, she now understood was a lie.

““the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked / defenseless against God’s judgment.

Dreams of being unaccountably naked in public, common to humanity, may be atavistic memories of this first day of exposure to judgment.

When you are without your clothes, you are also most vulnerable. The dream of becoming mortified at the realization that you are naked in public may reflect a waking situation where you fear being exposed and feelings of shame. 

“and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God.”

“And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked / exposed; and I hid myself [from judgement / death]” (Genesis 3:8-10)

Can we not recognize that the angels, both righteous and fallen, especially Lucifer, even all creation, were poised, breathless, in agony of anticipation of the outcome of the LORD God’s next action?

“now also will I give sentence against them…Woe unto us! for we are spoiled…I have heard a voice…the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now!” (Jeremiah 4:12-31)

The first rule of war is “know your enemy.” Lucifer miscalculated both Adam’s and God’s responses.  

“And the LORD was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them, and had respect unto them, because of his covenant [of dominion with them]…and would not destroy them, neither cast he them from his presence as yet.” (II Kings 13:23)

Lucifer was totally unable to anticipate this outcome because it was completely alien to his own character. As the game proceeds we find that every move that the Adversary makes, God successfully counters. That’s because God has a long range strategy and sees the end from the beginning, and his adversary is constantly playing catchup.

“I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure…yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.” (Isaiah 46:9-11)

What purpose was that?

“make (hu)man(ity) in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over…all the earth.“ (Genesis 1:26) 

And how God able to manage that?

Forgiveness is the opposite of making the offender pay through justice.

Forgiveness does not mean ignoring the offense or treating it as though it didn’t happen.

Forgiveness is when the offended party suffers the consequences of the offense.

We see forgiveness in action in many aspects of life, such as in:

1. Banking laws – transferring a debt that is owed by the debtor to the to someone else who pays what is owed, or assumes the debt, also known as “imputing” the debt. For example, it is estimated that in that one banking crisis tax payers covered $8.5 trillion in bailouts to banks and insurers.
2. Judicial laws – transferring the punishment imposed on an offender to an innocent person who pays the fine or serves the time.
3. Personal relationships

We struggle with forgiving those who have hurt us because intuitively we understand that we are left bearing the burden of that offense through emotional suffering, physical suffering, financial costs, damaged reputation, loss of social standing, loss of hopes and dreams for the future, all we’ve invested into that future, our unreclaimable youth, our hard work, our money – everything we’ll never be able to get back.

And Jesus said,

“if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

That just doesn’t seem right! 

But I know from my own personal experience that brooding over injustice, regret, insistence on “It shouldn’t have been like that!” trapped me in a pit of despair, deep depression, physical deterioration, social restrictions, terribly poor judgment with a cycle of failed attempts to restore the unforgiven relationship through a series of replicated and therefore likewise doomed relationships. When my (second) divorce lawyer asked “Why did you ever marry _________?” I unwittingly blurted out “I just wanted ____ to love me, or at least a close facsimile.”

As long as I chose not to forgive him, I was holding on to the debt he owed me.

Can we not recognize that meant I was holding on to a relationship with him instead of moving on to a new life, transformed by death to the old?

Christianity’s most evident loss of power to overcome cycles of sin in individuals and society can be directly linked to its failure to understand forgiveness.

Christianity’s teaching that salvation is from punishment for sin in hell by believing that we are forgiven because Jesus is the Son of God who died to take our spiritual punishment is such a massively oversimplified dogma of the entirety of God’s work in mankind.

It’s not about us rejoining our loved ones in heaven and living our lives forever in pure delight!

Singularity Creator YHVH created mankind to be in relationship with him.

Our ancestor’s disconnect from YHVH was passed down – likely as an epigenetic trait – by all subsequent generations of humans as a condition known as the sin nature. While sin is most apparent in the damage done to other humans, the greatest damage is actually done to YHVH “for whom are all things, and by whom are all things.” (Hebrews 2:10)

We are so oblivious to his primacy in our lives. We treat God as if he’s just a vending machine, dispensing on demand, and his forgiveness as just another snack option.

In reality, all the damage we’ve done through the sins we’ve committed against his Creation has blown back on him.

The first step in restoring a relationship with YHVH is to relinquish reliance on all other relationships for life’s physical, psychological and spiritual needs. 

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

Wow! What a horrible rule! How did Christianity ever get off the ground with that prime directive?

First, let’s ensure we’re all defining the key word “hate” the way it was meant to be defined. 

It is not an emotional reaction. It is a thoughtful choice to reject one in favor of the other. Note the comparative meaning of (miséō) which centers in moral choice, elevating one value over another.

Yeshua’s instructions are described as being the same as those for marriage. A proper marriage identifies us as so united with the spouse that we reject all other relationships that would pull the spouses apart, or harm the other spouse.

“For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:28-32)

As our relationship with a righteous God strengthens, our thoughts, ways, and sensitivity to right and wrong become more and more at odds with our human relationships. Spouses, children, work associates, friends, are discomfited by our evolving standards, our failure to fit in with their comfort zone.

God is not welcome in ungodly society, and neither will anyone be who identifies with him.

We will find ourselves rejected / hated. It can’t be helped. We either

1. accept the losses of marriages, family relationships, jobs, friendships – paying the price, i.e. forgiving those who harmed us when we did them no wrong,
2. or we capitulate, rejecting / hating a relationship with righteous God in order to maintain those relationships.

Now does what YHVH’s Savior declared about “hating / rejecting” human relationships make sense? 

1. “if ye forgive not men their trespasses
   • instead of accepting the psychological and social damage caused by broken relationships, you identify with them by maintaining the ungodly relationship
2. neither will your Father forgive your trespasses
   • because he can’t drop his standards to accept an ungodly relationship with you.

When we refuse to forgive – to suffer – we are sabotaging the process of salvation, that like the laws of physics, God can’t overrule without destroying the entire fabric of reality.

When King David committed adultery and murder he didn’t only asked God for forgiveness, he also asked the woman he had wronged for forgiveness. 

Bathsheba was an innocent victim who suffered extreme abuse at the hands of a respected political and religious figure who betrayed her submission to his authority and used his power to deny justice.  And then to be forced to live with the abusive, lying, deceiving, man who destroyed your life?  It would be insufferable.  To really feel how this impacted Bathsheba, consider the accounts of the survivors of the genocide in Rwanda, poignantly communicated in the book As We Forgive.

And then, one night, David comes to Bathsheba, saying in whatever way he communicated it, “I’m sorry.  Please forgive me.”  She could look into his eyes and see his agony, his soul poured out onto death, his sincere remorse and desperate need for her forgiveness.

Forgiveness would cost her dearly. For the rest of her life Bathsheba would bear the humiliation of an irreparably destroyed reputation as she was falsely convicted in the court of public opinion of seducing the nation’s hugely popular rock star politician. She would feel a sense of betrayal to her first husband Uriah, who had loved her with a total devotion as his only wife. She would experience loneliness, shunning, and outright hatred from the other, highly competitive wives in the king’s harem pushing their own and their son’s interests. She would find it impossible to assuage her heartbreak of losing her first born son due to continued involvement with the man who caused her trauma.

I don’t think it was enough for David to hear from the prophet Nathan that God had forgiven him. We humans require experiencing forgiveness from one human to another, with our senses – to see the change in expression on the face of the forgiver, to hear the words “I forgive you”, to feel the hug, to smell the skin your face is pressed against, to taste the tears from the very person you hurt and deserve to be forever out of their life, but who chooses to allow their suffering to be a permanent part of their identity as instead they reconcile.

We should get blown away by how down-to-earth Almighty God has always been in his dealing with mankind – working through mankind from day one!