Above and Beyond

I spent some time looking for a good example of atonement, this week. It was more difficult than I expected because so many of the examples I found equate atonement with forgiveness – synonyms. I have to admit, that I have thought of them as the same as well. But when I look at the description of the things that happened on the Day of Atonement, there’s something more going on there above and beyond forgiveness.

See, all the rest of the year (and even throughout the Day of Atonement) sacrifices were happening to forgive individuals of their individual sins – a person would bring his lamb to the tabernacle, lay his hand on the head of the lamb and confess his sin, kill the lamb and then the priest would carry the blood of that sacrifice into the Holy Place. Symbolically then, that’s where the sin of that person stayed, until the Day of Atonement.

On that day, the High Priest would offer a sacrifice to forgive his own sins and then he would do something very different.

 He would take two goats, present them both to the Lord at the entrance to the Tabernacle and then draw lots to tell which goat would be the Lord’s goat (the sin offering) and which one would be the scapegoat.

“Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, bring its blood inside the veil … and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat. So he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, for all their sins; and so he shall do for the tabernacle of meeting which remains among them in the midst of their uncleanness. There shall be no man in the tabernacle of meeting when he goes in to make atonement in the Holy Place, until he comes out, that he may make atonement for himself, for his household, and for all the assembly of Israel. And he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord, and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.
“And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place, the tabernacle of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.” Leviticus 16:15-22

What I learned this week is that the goat that becomes the Lord’s goat has not had any sins confessed over it and no hands laid upon it, so it is “sinless.” That way it’s blood symbolically cleanses away all of the sins that have been "piling up” in the sanctuary all year long.

Then all of those sins are confessed over the scapegoat, who is not killed but led out into the wilderness never to be seen again – essentially carrying with it all of those sins that had been in the sanctuary. So now, the sanctuary is cleansed of those sins for another year.

Atonement is not about forgiveness because those sins were already forgiven when the individual made his sacrifice. Atonement is something more. It’s erasing the evidence of those sins.

Here’s an example of what I’m trying to say from a book called, Temptations Men Face by Tom Eisenmann.

“Several years ago I heard Bob Sheffield of the Navigators tell a moving story … Before he became a Christian, Bob played professional hockey in Canada. He was tough, loved to fight, and found himself in jail one night after a barroom brawl. Later, Bob and his wife became Christians. They…accepted a temporary assignment with The Navigators…in the States.
“Bob had to apply for landed immigrant status, which would allow him and his wife to continue in ministry in the United States. But because he had a criminal record, his request was denied….They decided to apply in Canada for what is called the ‘Queen's Pardon.’ Following thorough investigation, the pardon was granted. Bob Sheffield received the following notice in the mail:
“Whereas we have since been implored on behalf of the said Robert Jones Sheffield to extend a pardon to him in respect to the convictions against him, and whereas the solicitor general here submitted a report to us, now know ye therefore, having taken these things into consideration, that we are willing to extend the royal clemency on him, the said Robert J. Sheffield. We have pardoned, remitted, and released him of every penalty to which he was liable in pursuance thereof.
“On any document from that time forward on which Bob was asked if he had a criminal record, he could honestly answer no. The pardon meant he was released from any possible punishment for the crimes, and the record of the crimes themselves was completely erased.
That is the kind of pardon we have in Jesus Christ. We are set free from any penalty or punishment. When asked, the answer is, ‘no record, pardoned by the blood of Christ.’[1]

So, since Adam and Eve believe the serpents lie and sinned in the Garden of Eden, the sins that Jesus died to forgive have been piling up in the heavenly sanctuary. But since 1844, Jesus has been going through the heavenly sanctuary and putting those sins right where they belong, on the head of Satan. Then during the thousand years when we’re in heaven, Satan will be wandering this empty earth, carrying the ultimate blame for all the sins in the entire history of the world.

What that means for each of us who have given our hearts to Jesus is, when our name is called and our file taken before the great Judge, instead of being so big it has to be brought in by the truckload, it contains one pristinely blank page to which God adds a giant WELCOME HOME stamp.

“For my pardon, this I see,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
For my cleansing this my plea,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

RefrainOh! precious is the flowThat makes me white as snow;No other fount I know,Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”[2]

You and I only have one responsibility in this process – accept Jesus’ sacrifice to cover our sin. I do – do you?

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[1] Tom L. Eisenman, Temptations Men Face (Intervarsity, 1992), pp. 21-22

[2] Words & Music: Robert Lowry, in Gos­pel Mu­sic, by William Doane and Robert Lowry (New York: Biglow & Main, 1876)

By His Stripes

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson for 1.21.12

Marilyn Sewell, a Unitarian minister, made the following statement while interviewing Christopher Hitchens, a well known atheist:  

“The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I'm a liberal Christian, and I don't take the stories from the Scripture literally. I don't believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example).”[1]

Wait!  What?  How is that possible?  I mean, either you believe that Jesus died for your sins and you’re a Christian, or you don’t believe it and you’re not.  Right?  That’s what I always thought.

Anyway, Ms Sewell finishes with a question for Mr. Hitchens:  

“Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?”[2]

And then things really get weird!  Why? Because Mr. Hitchens’, the atheist’s answer makes more sense to me than the minister’s question.  Mr. Hitchens says, 

“I would say that if you don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you're really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”[3]

This from a man who wrote a book called, Why Religion Poisons Everything.  Interesting.

Maybe it’s easier, on some level, to believe in a Jesus who doesn’t ruffle any feathers, just a really great Guy, who said some really nice things about loving everybody.  It’s easier to keep everything neat and tidy, I guess.

The problem is, that molded plastic Jesus can’t save you or me.  He wouldn’t take the punishment for my sins.   He’s more like what Max Lucado calls “The Rabbit’s Foot Redeemer. 

“For some, Jesus is a good luck charm. The ‘Rabbit's Foot Redeemer.’ Pocket-sized. Handy. Easily packaged. Easily understood. Easily diagrammed. You can put his picture on your wall or you can stick it in your wallet as insurance. You can frame him. Dangle him from your rear view mirror or glue him to your dashboard.
“His specialty? Getting you out of a jam. Need a parking place? Rub the redeemer. Need help on a quiz? Pull out the rabbit's foot. No need to have a relationship with him. No need to love him. Just keep him in your pocket next to your four-leaf clover.
“For many he's an ‘Aladdin's Lamp Redeemer.’ New jobs. Pink Cadillacs. New and improved spouses. Your wish is his command. And what's more, he conveniently reenters the lamp when you don't want him around.
“For others, Jesus is a ‘Monty Hall Redeemer.’ ‘All right, Jesus, let's make a deal. For 52 Sundays a year, I'll put on a costume coat and tie, hat and hose and I'll endure any sermon you throw at me. In exchange, you give me the grace behind pearly gate number three.’
“The Rabbit's Food Redeemer. The Aladdin's Lamp Redeemer. The Monty Hall Redeemer. Few demands, no challenges. No need for sacrifice. No need for commitment.
“Sightless and heartless redeemers. Redeemers without power. That's not the Redeemer of the New Testament.”[4]

Or anywhere else in the Bible, for that matter.

Isaiah describes a very different Redeemer.  

“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  Isaiah 53:4-6

There’s nothing tidy or polite about the Jesus that Isaiah describes – a Redeemer who loves me so much that He took my place in Hell so that I could stand with Him in Heaven.

 

Ellen White says it so beautifully in The Desire of Ages. 

“Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. ‘With His stripes we are healed.’”[5]

Jesus isn’t a polite, pinky out, only when it’s convenient kind of Redeemer.  He’s a wade in up to His waist, reach down and haul us out of the mud kind of Redeemer.  He’s messy and controversial, and He loves each one of us, personally and individually.

“Jesus does not excuse [our] sins, but shows [our] penitence and faith, and, claiming for [us] forgiveness, He lifts His wounded hands before the Father and the holy angels, saying: I know them by name. I have graven them on the palms of My hands.”[6] 

“Author Henri Nouwen tells the story of a family he knew in Paraguay. The father, a doctor, spoke out against the military regime there and its human rights abuses. Local police took their revenge on him by arresting his teenage son and torturing him to death. Enraged townsfolk wanted to turn the boy's funeral into a huge protest march, but the doctor chose another means of protest. At the funeral, the father displayed his son's body as he had found it in the jail—naked, scarred from electric shocks and cigarette burns, and beatings. All the villagers filed past the corpse, which lay not in a coffin but on the blood-soaked mattress from the prison. It was the strongest protest imaginable, for it put injustice on grotesque display.
“Isn't that what God did at Calvary? … The cross that held Jesus' body, naked and marked with scars, exposed all the violence and injustice of this world. At once, the cross revealed what kind of world we have and what kind of God we have: a world of gross unfairness, a God of sacrificial love.”[7]

“For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.  For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.”  John 3:16,17 (Amplified Bible

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[1]Dr. Ray Pritchard, "Christopher Hitchens Gets it Exactly Right," KeepBelieving.com (2-1-10)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Max Lucado, Six Hours One Friday (W. Publishing, 2004), pp. 89-90

[5] E.G. White, The Desire of Ages, page 25

[6] E.G. White, The Great Controversy, page 484  

[7] Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God (Zondervan, 1997), pp. 185-186

Clinging to Inadequacy

Commentary on Sabbath School lesson for 4.16.11

“Surrender don't come natural to me
I'd rather fight You for something
I don't really want
Than to take what You give that I need”[1]

These are some of the words for Rich Mullins’ song “Hold Me Jesus”.  Mullins has really caught the essence of our constant struggle with God:  He wants to give us eternity and we want the here and now.  I have to mention the show Hoarders: Buried Alive again.  Somehow their experience seems to parallel, on an individual scale, how all of humanity has been acting since Adam and Eve took a bite of whatever fruit that was.

So, here’s this person who has “collected” so much stuff that he (or she) cannot walk through his own house without stepping on things.  There are whole rooms that are completely unusable.  It seems like most of the time, there is very little of value in the house, just tons of things the person is afraid to get rid of, for whatever reason. The person has usually come to the point where he is either going to lose his home or his family because of the mess.

Enter the psychologist and the professional organizer, both of whom specialize in hoarders and they start trying to help the hoarder.  The organizer will pick up some random thing off of the top of a pile (maybe a plastic hanger that’s broken or a stray glove) and ask the hoarder if he can get rid of it.  Amazingly the hoarder, who knows that losing his family and/or house is imminent, will hold this bit of garbage and really struggle with being able to let it go. One man was on the verge of losing contact with his wife and little boy because of his hoarding.  They had already moved out of the house.  The father had one whole room filled with nothing but toys that he had bought for his son…but he had never given any of them to his son…the son he was going to lose all contact with.

Aren’t we just a whole lot like that?  Our lives are filled to overflowing with trivia that is separating us from God.  We invite Him in to help us de-clutter, but everything He asks us to get rid of, we want to hang onto.  Meanwhile, He’s waiting to give us eternal life.

“[In an article for Decision magazine], Samuel Kamaleson illustrates [the difficulty of submission] through a Christian folk story from South India. … it opens with a young boy who loved to play marbles. He regularly walked through his neighborhood with a pocketful of his best marbles, hoping to find opponents to play against. One marble in particular, his special blue marble, had won him many matches.
During one walk he encountered a young girl who was eating a bag of chocolate candy. … he had a weakness for chocolates. As he stood there interacting with the young girl, his salivary glands and the rumbling in his stomach became uncontrollable, and he thought to himself, I have got to get my hands on those chocolates.
“…he asked the girl, ‘How about I give you all these marbles for those chocolates?’ She replied, ‘Sounds fair to me.’
He put his hand in his pocket, searching for the distinguishing cracks on the surface of the blue marble. Once he identified the blue marble with his finger tip, … and pulled out all the other marbles.
“As he handed the marbles to the girl in exchange for the chocolate, the boy thought his plan was a success and turned to walk away. As he began to eat the candy, he suddenly turned to the girl and asked, ‘Hey, did you give me all the chocolates?’
“Our fallen nature persuades us to posture ourselves in the same deceptive and defiant attitude as the boy in this story. We want everything the kingdom of God has to offer. … we want all our prayers to be answered, we want to ‘feel close’ to Jesus, …—we want it all. But we are unwilling to give up everything for it. Many times there is a ‘blue marble’ in our lives that we seem unwilling to offer to the control of Christ. …”[2]

Adam and Eve had been wearing garments of light and they gave them up for fig leaves.  They traded everyday face-to-face communion with God for a piece of fruit…hm. When the One who could save them came looking for them, they hid.

It wasn’t until Adam and Eve spoke to God and confessed what had happened that they found out that God already had a plan to rescue them from their sin.  Adam and Eve had tried to fix things by sewing fig leaves together, but they didn’t realize the full cost of what they had done.  What they had done could not be fixed without the shedding of blood  --  fig leaves just were not going to cut it.

“He who would become a child of God must receive the truth that repentance and forgiveness are to be obtained through nothing less than the atonement of Christ. Assured of this the sinner must put forth an effort in harmony with the work done for him, and with unwearied entreaty he must supplicate the throne of grace, that the renovating power of God may come into his soul. Christ pardons none but the penitent, but whom He pardons He first makes penitent. The provision made is complete, and the eternal righteousness of Christ is placed to the account of every believing soul. The costly, spotless robe, woven in the loom of heaven, has been provided for the repenting, believing sinner, and he may say: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10).”[3]

Are you ready to give up your fig leaves for a perfect robe of righteousness?  I am.

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[1] Rich Mullins, “Hold Me Jesus”, A Liturgy, a Legacy, & a Ragamuffin Band (1993)

[2] Christopher L. Heuertz, Simple Spirituality (IVP, 2008), pp. 116-117; Samuel T. Kamaleson, "Mangoes and Marbles," Decision magazine (January 1978)

[3] E.G. White, A New Life, p. 23