The End of the Story

In thinking about difficult relationships with other believers, one of the truths that has been most comforting to me is the glory of Heaven. Not streets of gold, or mansions, or crowns, or harps, but, as Jonathan Edwards liked to say, that “heaven is a world of love!” What has been of immense comfort to me is to think of the certainty of the happy ending. The promise of happiness together in the end is as rock-solid as the truthfulness and power of God. No matter how difficult some relationships may be with other believers in this age, no matter how strained or broken the relational bonds may be in this world, no matter how much we may fail to fully reconcile in this life through pride, foolishness, or misunderstanding, there stands God’s unbreakable promise that the story has a happy ending for his people. Someday, when God completes his work of redemption and brings us all into his presence, we will stand before him, full of love for him and for each other, with no trace of resentment, bitterness, anger, or misunderstanding. It won’t be so important then who was right and who was wrong. Everything will be swallowed up in God’s divine love. Our faces will shine like the stars of heaven, full of unveiled goodness and love. No walls of self-protection. No hidden shame. No bitter regrets. God will be all in all, which is precisely why there will be such unity among us in heaven. Have you noticed how all the saints in heaven portrayed in Revelation are united in their enraptured focus on God? There is no self-promotion in heaven. Probably all relational conflict among believers is attributable in some degree to a self-focus instead of an absolute God-focus. Our dreams, our ideas, our desires, our expectations, or our fears have somehow contaminated the unity we ought to have. I don’t think we can expect perfection in this area this side of heaven. As long as we live in this evil age with remaining sin within us, we will always have some vestige of sinful self-interest. Part of our goal should be to become more and more God-centered in our desires, dreams, and expectations. To do the hard, long work of giving up our cravings for self-glory, self-justification, and self-protection and focus instead on God’s glory, God’s will, God’s power, and God’s love. A chorus I learned as a child says, “Let’s forget about ourselves, and magnify the Lord, and worship him.” Maybe it should say, “Let’s forget about ourselves by magnifying the Lord and worshiping him.” For the sake of maintaining “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3), let’s increasingly forsake self-interest and instead focus humbly on God. That’s a noble goal, but, as I said, I don’t think we’ll ever reach perfection in this area this side of heaven. Which brings me back to my main point. Even though we will never reach relational perfection in this life, we have God’s sure promise that in the end, we will be standing side by side, full of love and pure affection for each other, all hurts healed and relationships restored, enjoying the glory of God’s presence together. This thought gives me great comfort, joy, and hope, and helps me to be patient and persevering in the midst of strained or broken relationships, knowing with certainty that we will love each other in the end, by the grace and power of God.

Do-able Christianity

It occurred to me recently as I studied 1 Corinthians 13 and thought about many of the sermons I have heard over the years that Christians who have a tendency toward legalism sometimes express it by sucking the emotions out of every virtue. Joy and happiness are defined as two completely different things, so that joy is reduced to peace or hope. Faith is said to have nothing to do with one’s feelings and is reduced to believing Gospel facts to be true. Love is said to be an action (which is true), not an emotion (which is not true). Fear of God is said to be respect or reverence, not actual fear. So one can have joy with no happiness, faith with no heart, love with no affection, and fear with no uneasiness. You can be a miserable person, but as long as you don’t deny Christ you can claim to be joyful. You can have no emotional reaction to the cross of Christ, but as long as you believe it to be true, you have faith. You can despise someone, but as long as you act good to them, you have love. As long as you behave biblically, you’re okay.

Could it be that this Christian behaviorism is nothing more than an attempt to make Christianity do-able without the Holy Spirit? I can see how legalism would push in that direction. I can’t change my heart, but I can choose to act certain ways, so I’ll define Christianity exclusively in terms of decisions of the will rather than affections of the heart. Give me the list of rules and I’ll keep them, but don’t ask me to have affection for someone I dislike. I can’t just decide to do that.

In fact, I’ve often heard preachers say, “God would never command us to do something that we can’t do!” Meaning, God would never ask us to change our emotions, because we can’t seem to do that by an act of the will. I say the exact opposite: “God never asks us to do anything that we can do.” Meaning, we cannot obey any of Christ’s commands without the Holy Spirit working in us. Legalism seems to want to make the Christian life naturally possible, whereas Scripture makes the Christian life naturally impossible. That is precisely why we need something supernatural in order to live it. I need the Spirit of God to work powerfully in my heart so that my emotions are stirred and enlivened in God-honoring ways. What is the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, humility, moderation? Sounds like pretty emotional stuff.

On this topic, I highly recommend Jonathan Edwards’ book, The Religious Affections, in which he establishes that true Christianity consists largely in the emotions (affections), enumerates things that don’t indicate one way or the other that your spirituality is genuine, and describes how to recognize true, grace-prompted emotions.