Posted on by Abe Austin

Relationship with the Ideal

All people fail us. At one point or another, each person betrays the bond that they have made with us. This is not an excuse to cut off our relationships, though. It is still right and prudent to invest in people and relationships. But to protect our soul against heartbreak, we must also develop even stronger bonds to the ideal and the transcendent, which will never fail us. Just as we have a relationship with people, we can, and must, have a relationship with each of the virtues. And then we remain committed to the relationship, not just for the person, but for the ideal’s sake.

So,

Become married to the ideal of marriage
Begin a romance with romance
Be a friend of friendship
Fall in love with love
And be loyal to loyalty

Posted on by Abe Austin

Do You Love Jesus?

Yes, Jesus truly loves you, no matter how you live your life
But that is only half of a relationship
Do you truly love him back?

Posted on by Abe Austin

A Loving Relationship with Christ- Conclusion

Summary)

In this study I have considered those that excuse sinful behavior with their testimony that Jesus loves us all, which is used to imply that he will accept even those who live in a manner that is condemned by the scriptures. I have strongly disagreed with this statement, though I have also emphasized that the claims of Jesus’s universal and radical love for us is true. Those assertions I have no dispute with at all.

But as I have pointed out, being loved by Jesus is not one-and-the-same as being saved. Jesus’s own words make clear that not everyone who calls on his name and invokes his love will be able to join him in the kingdom of heaven. Some of those that he loves will not be found acceptable in the day of judgment. This is a sober statement, and not popular, but the scriptures are abundantly clear on the matter.

I made clear in this study that what actually does save us is a real and living relationship with Christ. And while half of that relationship is defined by him knowing and loving us, which is a gift that is given to us freely, the other half requires us to know and love him back, which requires deliberate action on our part. Specifically, the scriptures say that they require us to follow the commandments.

Only those who are willing to stop living in sin as a way of life, and who earnestly seek to obey Christ, and sincerely repent when they fall short, are going to genuinely develop a loving and knowing relationship with him. And only those that genuinely develop a loving and knowing relationship with him will be saved.

In my last post, I also made the point that living in a state of sin generally comes from a dearth of feeling the love of Christ, not an abundance. People habitually sin as a coping mechanism, and usually what we are coping for is how unworthy and fundamentally unlovable we feel. Even if we believe Christ loves us in our head, deeply feeling the reality of that in our hearts is necessary for us to stop coping and sinning as a way of life.

Words of Hope)

Thus, the call to surrender our sin and become holy is not a call of forced perfectionism. It is not a call to white-knuckle our way through life. It is a call to break down the walls we’ve built inside, let the love of Christ flow in, genuinely feel it in our hearts, and then love him back by following his way.

The call to repentance is not one of shame and burden, it is one of love, freedom, and hope. Does it involve surrender? Does it involve change? Does it involve following rules? Yes, but it isn’t really about the surrender, it’s about not needing to harm oneself anymore. Not really about the change, but about being restored. Not really about the rules, but about reciprocating our Savior’s love. It is a glad message, even the most joyful one the world has ever known.

Posted on by Abe Austin

A Loving Relationship with Christ- Reciprocated Love

The Need to Know)

In the last post we made clear that all of us are loved by Jesus, all of us are offered salvation in his name, but not all of us who call upon that name will actually be saved. What, then, still remains? What must be paired with the love of Jesus for us to be redeemed?

Well, continuing with the scripture from yesterday, what explanation did Jesus give to those that would be rejected from his kingdom. He said, “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23).

Contrast that with Jesus’s description of eternal life was: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3).

Both of these passages use the very “know.” Clearly, “knowing” has something to do with those that are saved and those that are not. But let’s look at two more verses to expand this further.

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment,” (Matthew 22:37-38).

“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love,” (1 John 4:8).

Here, the verb “know” is joined by “love.” Thus, we need to know Christ, and be known by him, and also part of that knowing is loving the Almighty, which is the greatest commandment that we are called to do.

Divine Relationship)

So yes, being loved by Jesus is an essential part of our salvation but so is loving him back. We need to be known by him, but also, we need to know him. In a word, we need “relationship.” This is the part that we were missing in yesterday’s post, this is why salvation is a two-way street. Being loved without reciprocation is not a relationship, and it isn’t enough for a man to be redeemed by.

We started this study by considering those who openly defy the commandments of God, but justify it by saying, “Jesus loves me just the way I am,” suggesting that their salvation was made sure by the fact that Jesus cared for them. They are correct that Jesus loves them, but that was only ever half the requirement for salvation.

To these people the correct response is, “Yes, Jesus does love you, but how do you love him back?”

Posted on by Abe Austin

Redeemed Through Christ- Part Two

This last Sunday I was invited to speak to my congregation, where I shared my personal experience with redemption. I posted the first half of that message yesterday, now here is the rest of it.

Part Two)

There is another pairing I saw in my journey of redemption that I would like to share as well. It is the pairing of Jeus’s unconditional love for me, and my love for him.

Just before I began my path of recovery, and wrote that letter to my wife, if you had asked me if Jesus loved me, I would have said, “of course!” But just as with my testimony of his atonement, it was only something I knew in my head. I did not feel it in my heart.

It wasn’t just ignorance, either, I was actively keeping his love away. I did not love myself, did not see how anyone could, and I certainly did not want the love of the most perfect being in the universe. I didn’t deserve it, so I couldn’t receive it. It was my therapist who started to break those paradigms. His name was Corey Holmgren. 

When I first met Corey, I was already breaking down the facade I had so carefully built up, and was now identifying with the shameful me underneath. But Corey helped me to see that underneath the shameful me there was also a wounded me, and under the wounded me, was a Son of God. And it was that Son of God, not the facade, the shame, or the wound, who was the real me. And that Son of God was lovable forever.

Where this really hit home was when Corey introduced me to a brotherhood of men also seeking recovery, and I cannot describe how paradigm-shifting of an experience it was to tell that brotherhood all of my deepest shames and regret, all the things that I thought it would kill me to tell to another person, and to have them respond by still loving me and wanting to be my friends. I didn’t know that that could happen. We were actively testing the promise in James 5:16: “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed,” and we found that promise to be true. And by seeing that sort of unconditional love in other men, I started to  believe that that love could be in God and Jesus as well.

In time, I came to hear these messages firsthand from my Savior. He and I had long conversations, where He took my mind back to experiences in my past, experiences that had built a wall between me and Him, and He showed me how His frame of that experience was different from my own, and that the wall was only on my side, and that I could take it down now, if I wanted, because it was keeping out the love that He had always had for me.

I became much more confident in the love of Christ, but like I said, there is a pairing here. Being loved by Jesus brought me to a certain level of redemption, but being able to sincerely love Him back was what made it complete.

I learned this on my recovery journey when I had a relapse. By that point, I genuinely felt comfortable in the love of Jesus, I still felt sure of it, but for the first time I realized that it wasn’t complete. It was a melody that needed a harmony. I prayed for God to come into my cold heart, but instead I felt the impression to start looking for a hymn to sing. Very quickly, I was led to a hymn I had never heard before, it’s not even in our own hymnal, called My Jesus, I Love Thee. I knew I had to sing it, out loud. I’ll spare you the singing, but I’d like to recite for you the first verse of that song:

My Jesus I love Thee, I know Thou art mine
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign
My gracious Redeemer, my Saviour art Thou
If ever I loved Thee my Jesus ’tis now

This song was a redeclaration of my love to Jesus, and as I sang it, I felt my heart come back to life. The tears flowed, and I learned that just as there is a Son of God inside of me that can always receive Jesus’s love, that Son of God can always love him back, even in my lowest moments.

A one-way love is charity; but reciprocated love is a relationship, and relationship is what Jesus ultimately seeks to redeem us back to. Relationship, being known and loved by Christ, and knowing and loving him back, is the literal definition of eternal life. John 17:3: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” 

My experience of redemption is the most precious thing in my life. It is the story of me that I value the most, the one I hope to be most defined by. It isn’t just a story for me, though. It is meant to be the story of each and every one of us. And though this story can play out universally, in each instance it is totally unique. Every person’s story of redemption is their own, beautiful and different from any other. It is the most interesting story that any of us have to tell. 

For most of my life the principles of Redemption were ones that I believed in my head, but now I know in my heart that they are true. I hope that these things are true for you as well, or that they soon will be. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 33:4-6

4 And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments.

5 For the Lord had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee.

6 And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.

God had agreed to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, and drive out their enemies, but said that He would do so through an angel now, instead of personally dwelling among them. His instruction for the Israelites to remove their ornaments while He considered “what to do unto thee,” further reinforced the limbo of their situation. Rather than rejoicing at the positive aspects of God’s message, the Israelites took the more somber parts very hard.

Perhaps the Israelites would still be under the guidance of the Lord, but they were acutely aware of what had been lost. They were going to be guided by a steward now, rather than the King Himself, and that caused them to mourn.

This depressed uncertainty is well represented in the people removing their ornaments, meaning all of their jewelry and precious adornments. They were returning to a state of plain, unvarnished humility. Only by returning to their most basic state, with nothing earthly to get in the way, would they have any chance of reconnecting with the Lord.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Limit to God in Our Lives

What we know of the Lord, and how deep our connection goes with Him, is limited only by our willingness to accept each new commitment He offers us.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 23:4-5

4 If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again.

5 If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.

We have already seen laws establishing the penalty for stealing a neighbor’s livestock, or for losing them while they were on loan, but today we see the responsibility of actually being a good neighbor, of going out of one’s way to help another in his time of need. Even when it is a neighbor that isn’t particularly liked.

If a person saw his enemy’s animal wandering, lost from its master, he was obligated to bring it back. If he saw it having collapsed under too heavy of a burden, he was obligated to relieve it. Not just encouraged, but obligated under the law. In fact, the phrase “and wouldest forbear to help him” suggests that if the thought arises in the person’s mind that he would rather not help his neighbor, then he is especially compelled to do exactly that! This is a good metric to gauge when our relationships with other people has gone too far astray: do we actively wish to not help them? And it gives us a good solution to turn things back around: then help them regardless!

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 16:27-30

27 And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.

28 And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

29 See, for that the Lord hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.

30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

When God commanded the Israelites to only gather one omer per person each day, some of the Israelites had disobeyed and gathered extra. Then He had given them a specific exception: they could gather two omers on the morning before the sabbath, and some Israelites disobeyed yet again, trying to gather one portion on both days.

Some people sinned by relying on God too little and overexerting themselves against His will, and some sinned by relying on God too much and trying to do the minimal effort each day. Both approaches were wrong.

We are meant to have a nuanced relationship with God, relying on Him where He is meant to be relied on, and not where He is not. We are supposed to seek His will and do it, but also follow our own judgment where He has not expressed His will. Sometimes one of His laws supersedes or places a boundary on another of His laws, and we are meant to recognize when we cross that threshold and adjust our behavior accordingly.

The life of the disciple is meant to be active and observant. We are expected to actually pay attention and adapt to God’s movements, not just sit in the same place, applying the same rules to situations that are not applicable. We must also be careful not to carve out our own exceptions, pretending all the while that it is really God’s exception. We may fool others with such a claim, and maybe even our own selves, but there is one who will not be fooled, and He will require an answer of us sooner or later.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Apology is a One-Way Street

When you apologize, acknowledge your wrongs and express remorse for them, stopping short of the wrongs that the other person has done to you. It doesn’t matter if you hurt them because of what they did, or if they responded disproportionately. Regardless of the context, if what you did was wrong, then own what you did and speak only to that.

Ideally, the other person will also apologize for their wrongs, stopping short of the wrongs that you did, only owning what their own failings. If they do, then you will both be free, but even if they don’t, you still will be.