Balance
Balance
Section: Style & Doctrine ⋅ Grace & Truth ⋅ For & Against ⋅ Judging ⋅ Testing ⋅ Love & Fear ⋅ Content ⋅ Word of God & Man ⋅ Final Thoughts
Balance is an important and oft taken for granted concept in Christian theology. The apostle John described Jesus (God) as having perfect balance, and Jesus said numerous things that must be balanced, rather than taken in isolation.
There is an expression in the 21st century which is growing in popularity. It is the description of people as "spiritual but not religious." One way of thinking of these people is they believe in God (maybe, maybe not the God of the Bible, but for now we'll focus on those who do) but have been turned off by the church. They haven't given up on God, but they've given up on attending and being part of a specific church. Typically because they think of themselves as having been burned by their church. Also, we are weary of the superficial and eager for the supernatural, but most of the church today is neither super nor natural.1 An important detail to start with is there is a difference between style and doctrine.
Biblical worldview cares significantly about Group A (doctrine), but not so much about B (style). There should be little room for disagreement on doctrine (and only then as long as we're basing our perspective on the whole of scripture) but there is huge, possibly infinite potential for disagreement on style. The Bible tells us doctrine, it does not tell us style. Even when God gave us style (like in Exodus 20:24 and 29:36-43) eventually we digressed. He lamented that the style was never the point, it was only intended to be a reminder of our doctrine, and the real point was our heart (Deuteronomy 10:16, Psalm 50:7-15, Isaiah 1:11-17, Amos 5:21-24, Matthew 23:23). Jesus slammed the leaders of His day who elevated style to the level of doctrine, especially in Matthew 23.
Today, many people who have left the church have left because of style issues. This is sad because style issues are non-essential. Style is what gives us the warm fuzzy feeling when we go to church, and while it's not the purpose of attendance, it's absence is understandably a serious problem.2 People deserve warm fuzzies when they enter the presence of God, as long as we balance that acknowledgment with another reality that, as sinful creatures, it is important we are made uncomfortable with our sin (including our inevitable hypocrisy). This is important in hopes that we continuously put forth deliberate effort to conform our character to be more like our Creator and His expectations (Luke 9:23, 2 Corinthians 10:5). God cares more about doctrine than style. Within doctrine, John gave us fascinating perspective at the beginning of his gospel account. John described Jesus as "full of grace and truth."
Religious teachers and leaders often make one fatal mistake. They [fail to] distinguish between principles and methods... Principles - God tells us... "love your neighbor, read your Bible, pray." Very clear. Methods - a lot of freedom on how we do that. What religious leaders do if they are legalistic in nature, they take principles and methods and they elevate their methods as equal with God's principles... God's principles come from scripture. [The pharasees] methods did not. They made them up. So they say, "Well it is written in the law." It's not written in the law that you can't carry your mat. I mean the guy's just been healed, and he's walking home, and they're ticked off because God works in his own way to accomplish his own purposes. His methods may violate your religiosity. If you were raised in church, you have certain expectations for method that maybe work fine for you and are not a problem. But to impose those [methods] upon people is legalism. And what tends to happen is people who have a liberal theology, they take the methods and the principles and they chuck them both. The people who are legalistic, they take the methods and the principles and they enforce them both. A good solid Christian takes the principles and enforces them strongly, and takes the methods and leaves a lot of flexibility.To be fair, the pharisees weren't crazy. Mean, perhaps, but not crazy. They had a reason for their perspective. Back in Exodus 31:14-18, God gave Moses the command about the Sabbath and made no small words about it. It was clearly a capital crime to ignore God's command and work on the Sabbath. The key was in the definition of work. The antagonists of this story said "it is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat." As Mr. Driscoll points out, no it didn't. So what's the deal? Were they lying?
Ed Grungor offered a wonderful explanation in his book, Religiously Transmitted Diseases (Amazon). His explain was in the form of a question, which was perfect since early in his book he pointed out "religion... always strives to remove all the mystery that congests life. It has answers for everything, because questions are way too untidy." His point was: "at what point does the legitimate desire to protect become a repressive system of abuse?" To help us sympathize with our spiritual oppressors, or to help people relate to us when they think we're the ones doing the oppressing, he gave this analogy:
Pharisaic thinking would go something like this: The rule is, "Don’t get hit by a car." We cannot allow anyone to be hit by a car... so, let's make sure that doesn't happen. Ah... let's make sure no one plays in the street - no street play will mean no one is hit by a car. Or better yet, it's probably best not to play outside at all, because then you won't happen into the street to get hit by a car. Or even better: Don't look out the windows of the house, lest you are tempted to think about going outside, which could lead into you wandering into the street to get hit by a car. Or perhaps best of all: Play and sleep in the closet so you aren't tempted to look outside a window at all - because you know where that can lead... The question becomes, at what point does the person we are trying to protect lose track of what the original law was all about?Jesus lamented about people like this at least twice, in Matthew 15:3-9 and Mark 7:1-13. Returning to our passage in John 5, to give them grace, we could assume the pharisees were trying to help the paraplegic man avoid the wrath of God. Because the truth is, none of us want to experience God's wrath. But the pharasees were missing grace. They didn't celebrate what God was doing because of what they needed to stay safe and comfortable in their perceived place in the world. Returning to today, Craig Groschel summarized our situation well. He said:
People [non-believers] just instinctively reject Jesus because Christians [His ambassadors] have been about all truth and very little or no grace... And truth without grace leads to legalism and judgmentalism. But then there's the flip side and that's the mindset of the world today and that's relativism and subjectivism. And that is all grace and no truth... But when Jesus came he came for grace and truth and when you seek Jesus and you experience [both] grace and truth He is life changing.And Satan doesn't want that. He doesn't want our lives to be changed for the better. He doesn't care how we're messed up, as long as we are. So he's pushing down on both sides of the scale, laughing like Batman's Joker, as he watches to see which way we tip. While he really does hate us, he doesn't have to waste his energy fighting us. His style is more to distract us from our Creator, and unfortunately it works a lot. Too often we foolishly defend only one side, complaining that one side is being attacked. Sometimes we're even more foolish and claim one of the sides as "our" side. But our job, as modeled by Jesus, is to maintain a balance of both grace and truth (John 1:17).3
The orthodox church of the European middle ages was perceived by the reformers as the ones who were (figuratively speaking) telling people, "play and sleep in the closet." (I'm not trying to pick on any religion or denomination here, humans are guilty of this, regardless of their affiliation.) Once the Bible was translated into the common language, people became aware that the closet had nothing to do with anything except man-made tradition, and avoiding being hit by a car was what God cared about. Martin Luther called the church out on this (Colossians 2:8), and rather than apologize, they dug in. Believing the Bible and taking it seriously (and above the word of man) was deemed worthy by the thought police of burning at the stake for a few decades, with life imprisonment without trial common in the years between when the burnings were considered a little extreme. But the Protestant Reformation happened anyway. We in America have long since separated the church from the state and returned our theology to what was actually written in the Bible, but now our culture has the opposite problem. Many people, led by atheists, who are themselves being used as pawns by the great adversary (1 Peter 5:8, 2 Timothy 2:25-26, 2 Corinthians 4:4), are questioning the relevance, and even the intentions, of the command "don't get hit by a car."
Of course in the Bible there is no command about cars, but there are commands about murder, sex, divorce, tithing, etc.4 As we watch current events in 2018, the thought police are already back at it again, trying to tell Christian business owners they can't decline customers, and street evangelists they can't quote the Bible in public, for threat of closure, fines, and/or jail.5 In other words, believing the Bible and taking it seriously (and above the word of man) has again been deemed worthy by the thought police of government punishment. Which provides fascinating insight. Now that the exact same attitude is showing for the opposite reason, this informs us it was never for a valid spiritual reason, nor is it valid this time.6 The thought police are not sent by God, He doesn't need their protection. It's always just been Satan messing with us, punishing those who reasonably succeed at balancing grace & truth without tipping to whatever extreme in society happens to be the current dominating trend.7 How long will it be until there is the political support to make caring about what God cares about a capital crime again? Illegal or not, God exists and has expectations. Some of them are suggestions, but some of them are real commands. Jesus said many things when He was here, and a couple of His comments might even seem contradictory. We'll look at a couple of them next, and rather than contradictory, I think they simply need to be balanced (they are complimentary when looked at correctly.)
Then another time, in Matthew 12:22-30, some pharisees put Jesus to the test, and since He was able to effortlessly free a man from possession by demons (which socially/politically embarrassed them) they needed a paradigm from which to attack Him. So, to explain how He could amaze the crowd and perform the miraculous healing, they accused Him of being possessed by a demon Himself (or otherwise in league with Satan). The broadest part of His response was in verse 30.
So in Mark and Luke we have Him essentially saying whoever isn't against me is for me, and then in Matthew saying whoever isn't for me is against me. (And don't forget James 4:4.) The key is in the balance. Jesus is balanced, or in other words, in absolute terms, a centrist. He wants us to be too (He wants us to be like Him).8 To those who are too far on the political/social right, He reminds them "whoever isn't against me is for me." To those who are too far to the left, He warns "whoever isn't for me is against me." There is validity to both left and right, but the two perspectives must be balanced, neither should dominate, and extremes should be avoided. Satan loves extremists.9 They're the ones who are willing to do anything in the name of God, as long as God doesn't mess things up and speak for Himself.10
There was another time Jesus expressed His frustration with our imbalance. In Matthew 11:16-19, He lamented about our duplicitous response to Himself and His predecessor, John the Baptiser. It's not that one or the other perspective was absolutely wrong as much as how the people were showing their cynical hearts. They told John, whom they perceived as too liberal, that he should have calmed down and come back down to earth, and they told Jesus, whom they perceived as too conservative, that He should chill out, live a little, and quit being so serious. We might be able to pull off that kind of duplicitous talk amongst ourselves, but God knows better. He saw through the hypocrisy, that they were assuming they themselves were the centrists and Jesus and John were the extremists. They had the roles horribly reversed (Proverbs 16:2). This is human nature, to assume we are (I am) the definition of righteousness and centrism. Which is why it's so important to read our Bible and gain the perspective God volunteered us through His word. Our intuitive error is only compounded when we remember we get help from the one who is pushing down on, no jumping up and down on, both sides of the grace-and-truth scale, just to find out which way he can make tip first. This is one form of spiritual warfare. There's a degree of forgiveness with spiritual warfare. A little stray from the right path and God is waayy more forgiving than you or I would be (Isaiah 57:15-19). But there's a degree when the scales have tipped too far, so much that God says we should know better, and we invite His discipline, or judgement. (Every parent knows this from dealing with their own kids, and there are numerous Bible passages including Hebrews 12:5-11.)
Judging is necessary to honor God's commands and we have repeated, explicit warnings to discern true and false teaching (doctrine), avoid being deceived, and to test ourselves in:
- 1 Thessalonians 5:20-22
- 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15
- 1 Timothy 4:1
- 2 Timothy 3:12-13
- 2 Timothy 4:2
- Titus 1:10-16
- Titus 3:3
- James 1:22
- 1 John 4:1-3
- Revelation 2:2
How could we possibly ever hope to obey these commands if we're not discerning (being judgmental) on right and wrong? When Paul reminded us to be "pure and blameless," how could we possibly be if we don't judge ourselves? And Psalms 19:12 and Proverbs 14:12, 16:2 remind us we need someone else to judge our behavior and point out our folly when we make a mistake (Ecclesiastes 7:16). Believing we don't make mistakes is the definition of self-righteousness (Proverbs 20:9, James 1:23-25) and falls negatively in the doctrine category (not style). Judging on doctrine is good, judging on style can be sin depending on how we do it. For example, telling someone they're wrong when they're just different than you (but not contradicting God) is bad, and is not far from self righteous. This is a big reason why Jesus talked so much about love. Loving and judging aren't mutually exclusive, but are a tricky balance if we've not had good role models.
When Jesus came to Earth two millennia ago, He said multiple times He wasn't here at that time to judge us: John 3:16-17, 8:15, 12:47. But notice what the very next verses say: John 3:18, 8:16, 12:48. That said, Jesus specifically said His visit was actually to facilitate our judgement in John 9:39 and Luke 12:49-51 (plus the prophet Isaiah's observation in Isaiah 11:3-4). He warned us He would return, and at that time we had better expect judgment: Matthew 16:27, John 5:22-30 (just a few verses after that incident with the paraplegic man above), Acts 10:42, 17:31, Romans 2:16, and the mother load: Revelation 19:11-16 (not to mention Revelation 20:12-13). He wasn't all peaches and butterflies, as noted in His lament in Luke 12:49-57, the demons who begged not to be tortured in Luke 8:28, and His pointed use of the word hypocrite seven times in Matthew 23. Jesus complimented Simon for judging in Luke 7:43. Hebrews 10:30 helps remind us of an even more important balance. That is, God made it clear He had exclusive jurisdiction to judge and condemn His (all) people, but we are expected to judge and discern right and wrong (sin).11 A text search for "righteousness justice" (here) reminds us of the character of Jesus/God and His judgement, as exmplified by Isaiah 16:5.
At the end of 1 Corinthians 5:13 (in group D above) Paul makes a seemingly random comment. He's reminding us that Moses said "purge the evil from among you" nine times in his sermon titled Deuteronomy (text search, here). It's fascinating that Paul would quote Moses's numerous references to the death penalty. It's easy to argue that Paul only suggested communal expulsion, not corporal execution, with his use of the word "expel". On what basis should we judge a person wicked and expel them? On nothing but the basis of God's original doctrines, as revealed in His Word, recorded in the Bible. There are numerous passages with instruction on how to correct a fellow believer (these would fit in group D above, but don't specifically use the word judge):
- Matthew 18:15-17 hub
- Galatians 6:1-2 hub
- 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15 hub
- 1 Timothy 5:19-20 hub
- 2 Timothy 2:23-25 hub
- 1 John 5:16-17 hub
- Titus 3:10-11 hub
- Hebrews 3:12-13 hub
So let's be crystal clear where connecting the dots of scripture lead us: we are commanded to judge right and wrong in our fellow believers without condemning people in the process to keep Christ's Church pure for the sake of His reputation and for the sake of our relationship with Him, using our most valuable asset, the Bible, as our guide (Hebrews 4:12, Leviticus 19:17). A loose analogy is when a parent tells a child "don't tattle on your sibling." This usually has to be said because one child is simply trying to get the other in trouble over something irrelevant, so they can be or feel on top. But as our children get older and more mature (able to demonstrate good judgment) it is important that they (we all) do report relevant malicious behavior to authorities. Similarly, it is implied that a mature believer should demonstrate proper spiritual discernment in Hebrews 5:13-14. When judging, be sure to remember all the above, including the serious difference between doctrine and style, and the delicate, precarious balance of grace and truth.
Most people in the world call Matthew 6:9-13 "The Lord's Prayer." But it would be more accurate to call it "The Lord's Model Prayer." His prayer was different, and recorded in John 17. One important section to draw attention to is John 17:20-23. With this in mind, the verses in group C above would apply more when looking across denominational lines than when looking at sin. Remember the Spanish Inquisition, the New Salem Witch Hunt/Trials, and the Catholic church's burning people at the stake for possessing non-Latin Bibles (let alone for trying to understand it for themselves)? Don't jump to criticizing the Church though. Everyone does it. Muslims have Sharia laws, Communists had a thick history in the 20th century alone of torturing and killing any and all theists (Christian, Jew, Muslim, Taoist, whatever), and the Left of the USA (not to be confused with generic liberals) in the 21st Century has been amassing political power to be so bold as to make the Democratic party platform center on abortion and gay rights so strongly that they all but explicitly criminalize the Bible, justifying themselves by calling conservatives (dissenters) "evil" and "haters." These are perfect bad examples of why Jesus commanded us not to judge (condemn) each other, while He was clearly an advocate of us judging (discerning) each other's God-defined sins (1 John 2:9-11, 3:15).
James claims that God doesn't tempt (or test or try) us in James 1:13-14. But then there's the rest of scripture, which clearly said God does:
- Genesis 22:1 hub
- Psalm 66:10 hub
- Proverbs 17:3 hub
- Isaiah 48:10 hub
- John 6:6 hub
- 1 Thessalonians 2:4 hub
- James 1:2-4 hub
- 1 Corinthians 3:13 hub
- 1 Corinthians 10:13 hub
- 1 Peter 4:12-13 hub
- Revelation 2:10 hub
- Exodus 16:4 hub
- Exodus 20:20 hub
- Deuteronomy 8:2 hub
- Deuteronomy 8:16 hub
- Job 23:10 hub
- Jeremiah 17:10 hub
- Zechariah 13:8-9 hub
There could be over 200 references to fearing God (or the Lord) in the Bible. Some highlights include:
- Deuteronomy 10:12-13 hub
- Deuteronomy 31:12-13 hub
- Job 28:28 hub
- Proverbs 1:7 hub
- Proverbs 28:14 hub
- Ecclesiastes 12:13 hub
- Isaiah 8:12-13 hub
- Isaiah 57:11 hub
- Jeremiah 5:21-25 hub
- Luke 12:5 hub
- Revelation 14:7 hub
How do we reconcile (or balance) this demand for fear from a God who is love? The key is what you fear establishes the boundaries of your freedom.
- Exodus 20:20 hub
- Deuteronomy 6:1-3 hub
- 2 Chronicles 26:3-5 hub
- Psalm 118:6 hub
- Matthew 10:28-33 hub
- 2 Corinthians 7:10 hub
So what does it mean to fear God? One demonstration of our fear is we put His opinion above our own. When my nine year old son wants to try something that most adults would consider stupid because of the immediate, unavoidable physical harm it would result in, I tell him my opinion is he shouldn't do it. God has given us His opinion on a few things, recorded in the Bible. Do we care? Do we invent laws protecting the "rights" of those who prefer to disregard God's opinion? Should we vote for people who make a platform out of normalizing sin, or even taxpayer funding it? Heaven forbid, because normalizing what God dislikes has a tendency to invoke His wrath. And more to the point, if we fear God, then we recognize God is God and the rest of us are not. What He calls sin in His word -is- sin, and man's word (yours, mine, a politician's, a dictator's, a king's) counts for nothing on this matter (we don't overrule His explicit statements, Isaiah 2:22).
Relating to the theme of balanced scales, there are numerous Bible verses where God makes it clear He expects us to act justly, and fairly, and he uses scales as an object lesson:
- Leviticus 19:36 hub
- Deuteronomy 25:13-16 hub
- Proverbs 11:1 hub
- Proverbs 16:11 hub
- Proverbs 20:23 hub
- Ezekiel 45:10 hub
- Hosea 12:7 hub
- Amos 8:5 hub
- Micah 6:11 hub
