God in the Hands of Angry Sinners--April 14, 2023

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners--April 14, 2023

"So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory." [Colossians 3:1-4]

From God's perspective, we're already risen from the dead--how about that?

I mean, just on the face of it, that's a strange idea to our ears.  After all, every time I check my wrist or my neck, I can feel my own pulse.  Everything my senses tell me says I haven't died yet, and therefore I can't already be raised from the dead [as much as some part of me really likes the idea of a shortcut that detours around death and skips right ahead to resurrection].

But it's even stranger--and also more wonderful--to think about this bold claim at an even deeper level.  If God already "thinks" of us as people who are raised to new life with Christ, then God has definitely put away all of our past mess-ups, trespasses, sins, iniquities, and omissions.  Even right now.  Even the worst of the worst stuff.  Even the things I haven't gotten around to doing wrong yet.  All of it has been left in the grave that we've already been raised up out of, because we've been joined to Christ Jesus, who is alive and risen from the dead.  And since Jesus is alive, the writer to the Colossians says, we're already joined with him in resurrection life, too, from God's perspective.  Nothing can keep us stuck in the grip of the grave, because Jesus has already taken us by the hand.

If that sounds too good to be true, I know at least one reason why: centuries' worth of Respectable Religious People [including some very well-known preachers] built their careers and brands on ingraining the opposite in us.  Plenty of pulpit-pounding sermons have ominously warned hearers that if they did this, that, or the other thing [or took the "wrong" position in a culture-war issue, or voted for the "wrong" candidate, loved the "wrong" people, or even got baptized the "wrong" way] they were in danger of being cut off from Christ and lost in death forever.  Jonathan Edwards, the well-known New England preacher of the eighteenth century, famously preached to a congregation full of worshipers that God "holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire," in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."  And of course, there are infinite variations still today.  The trouble is, none of that thinking seems to be ready to take these words from Colossians seriously.  Because here the writer to the Colossians just comes out and says, "God already counts you as risen from the dead along with Christ, even right now while you're living your life."

In other words, from God's vantage point, there is no spider-dangling over the flames and no threat that Jesus' people might not really be Jesus' people after all. Nope, from the perspective of the living God, it's a done deal and a fait accompli: you have been tethered to Jesus forever, so that wherever he goes, you go.  And since Jesus has come through death and into resurrection, well, God sees you in the same terms.  Raised already, seated with Christ, and past the reach of guilt, shame, and sin.  God has already decided not to keep a record of the wrongs we haven't even gotten around to doing yet--all because of Christ who holds us with him.

Taking that seriously today means, first of all, a HUGE sigh of relief.  And second of all, it keeps us from mistakenly picturing God as some kind of split-personality or abusive spouse who flips from being tender to terrifying without any notice.  God is not at one moment salivating at the prospect of watching you burn in hell, and then the next moment affectionately calling you "My beloved."  God, rather, has joined you to Christ, and sees you with the same risen beauty and Jesus' own resurrected self.  And if we've gotten ourselves persuaded that God is as capriciously cruel as we can be to each other, then maybe the problem is that we've remade God into our own distorted reflection, rather than actually hearing the amazing grace that's been shouting to us from the Scriptures all along.  Maybe the issue is that we've put our image of God into the hands of angry sinners, who can't help but assume that God is as vengeful, erratic, and petty as we are in our worst moments.  And maybe today is the day for us to hear the New Testament's promise that God has already counted you among the guests at the heavenly banquet, and that as far as God is concerned, you are already seated with Christ at the place of honor there.  

You don't have to be afraid of God zapping you anymore.   Maybe someone you will cross paths with today needs to hear that news, too.

Lord Jesus, enable us to believe that we are joined to you in both life and death and into resurrection, so that where you are, we can count ourselves too.