Good soil, Justice and The Princess Bride

Every Monday a group of us gets together to dig into the things that Jesus has given us authority to do as His followers. Things like healing and deliverance. It's cool because it's a safe place where we can dig into Scripture and really take an honest look at it; searching out things that we are bothered by, blessed by and unsure about. We don't have to worry about offending anyone or feeling like our questions are dumb. Often we discover that we're not alone in our questions.

A couple of weeks ago we dug into something that seemed on the surface to throw a monkey wrench into a truth we hold dear - that God's will is ALWAYS to heal. And that he does not make us sick or use illness to teach us lessons. This is the foundation that we minister from. Jesus was and is the perfect revelation of Who God is and what He desires for us. And he brought healing and deliverance. For God to use sickness to teach a lesson would be child abuse.

Yet, there are places in scripture where it states plainly that God brought sickness onto various people(s) as a measure of judgment. Rather than try to excuse this or interpret it to say what we wanted, we dug into it. The answer that seemed obvious as we searched was that there IS a difference between the Old Testament (an earlier covenant that God made with His people) and the New Testament (a better, complete, fulfilled covenant). To get there, we had to go back to the begining like Vicini told Fezzik and Inigo in The Princess Bride.

This is kind of a long journey. It's a good one. We learned a lot. I hope you'll stick with us!

God is the same always. Though his HOW might change, his WHO does not. To quote my friend Don, there is a dividing line in how God deals with people now and how he dealt with people then....And it is shaped like this:


It's an overused cliche...That the cross saved us. Churchy McChurcherites (to quote my other friend Ryan) use it all the time. But it's worth really getting what that means.

God is first and foremost love...Complete, unadulterated love. He is also patient, kind, slow to anger and everything else that is listed 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. If you don't truly believe this, if you have any doubt that God loves YOU with an everlasting love then trying to understand some of the uglier things in Scripture is difficult. That is because God is also just. Love and Justice go hand in hand. The dictionary says that justice is: The quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness.

The natural realm always reflects the spiritual realm. So the analogy of courts of law is an easy one to use. There are consequences for breaking laws that have been set forth to protect people. Take a story like Sodom and Gomorrah. People who continually went against the ways of God were subject to the judgment of God (just as a repeat criminal is subject to a judge in an earthly court of law). Knowing that love is slow to anger and long-suffering, we can know that God didn't bring wrath flippantly, in a knee-jerk fashion and especially NOT with pleasure. These folks were not dealt with without pre-warning.

Ok, so bad people get punished. Great! Problem is, many people walked around believing that since their wrong-doings weren't THAT bad, then God would be OK with them...After all, "I might have lied, but at least I didn't KILL!". In order to show people that any level of wrongdoing was still wrongdoing, God instituted the law...Read the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy for a taste of exactly what one must do to not be under the wrath of God. No one can do it.

God knew this. He knew it at the beginning when he created us with free will. He also knew that as our perfect Father he would have to rescue us.

So He did. He came to Earth as a human to be the ultimate debt payer for all of human kind. Anyone can take that pass and walk out of an inevitable prison for free. At that crossroad was where the "rules" changed. Again, God's character did not change, He is still love and He is still just. But the payment for the injustice that we do has been taken care of. God no longer has need to punish for sins. He took it onto himself and along with that, He took upon himself, sickness. By his wounds, we ARE healed (Isaiah 53:5). It is already done.

Why people, even followers of Christ, still get sick is a whole 'nother can of worms involving choice, spiritual battles and faith. But if we don't internalize and live in the reality of what has already been done for us, we will not have the foundation from which to grow into living as God intended.

So, when Scripture says that God brought sickness upon a nation as punishment, he did. There is no sugar coating that. But that was never God's ideal...It is not God's best. But once you cross that bridge into the wake of Jesus - who shows us what God DESIRES for us - we find that there is healing...For body, soul and spirit. That is where I want to plant myself. That is where I want to grow...In the soil of God's provision. Even though I don't fully understand it. Even though it means battling an enemy I cannot see. When I place myself into the truth of God's love for me and accept that I can do what Jesus did and more, I find life like I never imagined.